Toronto: With Canadian taxpayers paying through their nose to host the G8 and G20 summits this month, many political leaders, including former prime minister Paul Martin, have joined in protests against the billion-plus dollar cost of the gatherings.
At $ 1.2 billion, the two summits, spanning three days, will be the costliest 72 hours in Canadian history.
The G8 summit is being held June 25-26 at Huntsville, about 215 km from Toronto, while the G20 summit will be hosted by Toronto June 26-27.
With anti-globalisation protesters making their intentions clear to disrupt the summits, the mounting cost of maintaining law and order and providing security for world leaders has come in for criticism by top leaders.
Former prime minister Paul Martin said on Wednesday that the cost of holding these summits was "completely beyond belief".
Asking for details of the huge security spending, he said: "I've gone to a great number of summits in my life... but I've never seen anything like this in terms of cost.
"The Brits just had their summit in Great Britain and certainly the public costs they had were nowhere near this kind of number-same thing with the Americans in Pittsburgh."
Dalton McGuinty, premier of Canada's most powerful province of Ontario with Toronto as its capital, too questioned the high cost of hosting the summits.
"I have the same reaction as Canadians do - a billion dollars is a lot of money. I don't know if it really has to be a billion dollars, and I hope that the federal government is giving this a second look to see if there's not some way possible for us to ensure that," the premier said.
The leader of the New Democratic Party, Andrea Horwath, said on Wednesday she was sure whether holding the summits is worth it.
"I'm not sure it's actually worth it...There's a heck of a lot more we can do," she said.
In the biggest security operations in the country, Canadian security and secret agencies are already snooping on protest leaders.
Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Canadian labour unions are among various organisations planning to disrupt the summits.
Apart from attending the summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to hold bilateral talks with his Canadian counterpart Stephen Harper.
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