The Montebello Summit or Much Ado About Nothing…

By now, local media will have predictably moved on to the next big news item, but while Bush, Harper and Calderon were meeting to discuss the delightfully vague Security and Prosperity Partnership, reporters were more than happy to supply front page coverage of irate, bandana-wearing protesters demonstrating against the meeting's secretive nature. Trouble was… I'm not quite sure what they were protesting against.

While I find it annoying that taxpayer money is squandered on a meaningless summit meeting between three leaders who have such a tenuous hold on power in their respective countries that they will barely be able to make a single decision that will outlast their mandates, I don't think it's worth protesting over. The past few days have been all show and very little substance. Bush stormed in on Airforce One like a Texan cowboy, smiled for the cameras, patted Harper on the back and then went mountain biking in the afternoon with Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.

Not to be outdone, Mexican president Felipe Calderon and his family spent the weekend at the prime ministerial summer retreat at Harrington Lake, Quebec with Harper and his family. While Hurricane Dean was approaching Mexico, Calderon enjoyed a weekend of swimming, boating and… sing-songs around a campfire. The day ended with a birthday cake to celebrate Calderon's 45th birthday. Did the hardcore negotiations take place before or after the birthday boy had a slice of cake?

In the meantime, more than 1,000 protesters gathered outside the Montebello grounds to protest the meeting's anti-democratic and secretive nature. First thing, first: Harper may be Canada's Prime Minister, but he obviously can't count. It reflects badly on him when he downplays the protests as a "sad affair", involving only 100 or so people.

Secondly, as a pact (and not a treaty), no public consultation needed to take place and people should remember that. What's the point of electing public representatives, if you don't let them represent you?

That being said, I do have a problem with the fact that Arctic sovereignty, border security and the war in Afghanistan were on the agenda, and all they deemed fit to consult were a group of 30 CEOs from each of the three North American countries. While I don't understand the reasons for people protesting better and closer cooperation between three increasingly interdependent countries, I do understand the misgivings and the opposition generated by close consultation with corporate interests. Where were the scientists, the human rights experts, the environmentalists?

At the end of the day, I suspect people were simply protesting in principle: the mere idea of Dubya, Harper and Calderon shacked together in a log cabin discussing all sorts of top-secret affairs, induces hives in many of us. The simple fact remains though that it was all for nothing; both the summit and the protests. At this point in their respective mandates, none of the three leaders are in a position to make any meaningful or groundbreaking decisions and so the protesters were protesting their mere presence. Or the simple fact that some of us are mountain biking on company time...