Glad it wasn't like this for URJ biennial!

You might not be aware (and ‘you’ would definitely not be living in Toronto if this is the case) that the G20 begins this coming weekend.  All of downtown Toronto has been transformed into a security zone, it seems.  Last night I was lucky enough to go to the Rogers Centre for the Jays v. Cardinals and downtown was deserted except for the groups of cops.  (What do you call a group of cops standing around?  A gaggle is geese…)  The protests are apparently under way.  People who work downtown are being advised to stay away or to come to work in street clothes.

Apparently over 1 billion has been spent to keep everyone safe.  We should expect highways to be closed down for up to 45 minutes at a time.  I live well north of the area where all of this is happening and have no plans to go downtown or anywhere near downtown.  I’ll stick to the suburbs until this is over.

And because I had to look it up, therefore it is probably worthwhile knowledge to share.  The G20 is composed of…

The Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (known as the G-20 and also the G20 or Group of Twenty) is a group of finance ministers and central bank governors from 20 economies: 19 countries plus the European Union. Recently summits meeting at level of Heads of government have been introduced. The 2010 chair country of the G-20 is South Korea.

Countries included are: South Africa, Mexico, Canada, USA, Argentina, Brazil, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, EU, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, UK, Turkey and Australia.

This list is oddly similar to the World Cup qualifying teams… hmmm.

Here’s a map to show the security zone. 

They’re projecting that the downtown businesses will lost $1 billion in revenue though this will not be measurable or be recovered at any point.

If anyone wanted my opinion on how to spend $1 billion, well, I can think of lots of ways and places.  It definitely wouldn’t be on security for a bunch of people in Toronto.