What could you do with a billion dollars?

If you would pay for the security for the global leaders who will be in Canada in late June, then you and Prime Minister Stephen Harper would get along just fine.

Canada will host a G8 Summit in Huntsville, Ontario on June 25 and 26, and a G20 Summit in Toronto on June 26 and 27. When Pittsburgh hosted the conferences in 2009, the security tab was $18 million.

Inflation sucks, doesn't it?
Both summits have been a celebration of overindulgent spending. The international media centre, for example, will cost about $23 million, highlighted by a $2 million fake lake that has drawn the ire of many.

Ironically, the main theme of the convention is supposed to be controlling government debt. Maybe Harper is trying to be ironic: he wants to use government over-spending at its worst to show other countries how to reign in their expenses.

Canada has done a good job of emerging from the global economic recession. The economy is growing. Unemployed people are able to find jobs. But one has to wonder why so much is being spent on these summits, especially since the federal government is tabling deficit budgets, and the economy is still in recovery mode.

It's great that Canada is one of the top eight economies in the world, and it gets to be part of the G8. And we do have to take our turn at hosting these sessions. They are opportunities to show off our country, its people, and good honest Canadian hospitality.

A lot of Canadians will question the need for a G8, a G20, and conferences for the leaders of those countries. Critics will claim that the world leaders will spew a lot of hot air about important issues, but accomplish nothing.

G8 and G20 apologists will say that a lot of important decisions are made at these conferences, and that we will see the impact of this summit in five or 10 years.

But nobody should try to justify the security bill.

Yes, there are the terrorists out there who want to make a name for themselves, and their terrorist organizations, by assassinating a world leader.

And there are the unemployed people who will gather in Huntington and Toronto to protest the summits. The protesters will spend way too much time designing signs and concocting chants, time and energy that could have been used to find a job.

But the terrorists and the protesters should not result in $1 billion for security. Not when it was so much cheaper in Pittsburgh.

The wonderful organization known as the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has the Teddy Awards each year to highlight the mismanagement of taxpayer dollars by municipal, provincial and federal governments. The G8 and G20 summits will certainly deserve a few 2010 Teddy Awards.