INTRODUCTIONThe Group of Seven and Eight (G7/8) major market democracies (United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada, and Russia) is coming to Kananaskis, Alberta, for its annual summit on 26-27 June 2002. The question of who will be coming with it is on everyone's mind. At the last gathering in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001, the eight leaders, together with the European Union, were joined by their personal representatives or 'sherpas,' by official supporting delegations that totalled some 2,000 people, and by 3,000 media representatives. Then there were the leaders and officials of several international organizations and developing countries, who attended an 'outreach' session at the summit's start. To protect everyone within the secure zone in the centre of Genoa a security force of several thousand was in place. Up to 200,000 civil society protesters from all across Europe and around the world were assembled outside the secure zone. Less visible were the many hundreds of civil society representatives who worked with the host Italian government to shape the agenda in the lead up to the summit, the anarchists who sent bombs to Italian authorities in the days before it began, and the members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network who planned to murder the summit leaders and their entourages.The injury to an innocent Italian civilian from the lead-up bombings and the death of an anarchist who attacked Italian security forces at the summit itself seemed to show that the summit was dominated and its fate was determined not by the G8 leaders but by those who surrounded them. Indeed, the wave of ever larger, ever more violent civil society protests at major international meetings began at the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Seattle in November 1999 and proceeded through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meetings in Washington and Prague in 2000. In the summer of 2001 the protests came to the Quebec City summit of the Americas, where 25,000 gathered to demonstrate and to hurl teddy bears over and to tear down the now infamous but all-too-fragile perimeter fence. While Quebec City was a quintessentially Canadian, predominantly peaceful, protest, the Swedes suffered a real shock soon after when major violence broke out at the European Council summit they hosted in Gothenburg. Three weeks later at Genoa, a new, uglier peak was reached. To those huddled within the secure zone, marching outside on the streets, or watching on television or the internet around the world, it seemed a far cry from the first G7 summit over a quarter of a century before. In France, in November 1975, six leaders and their foreign and finance ministers had met at Chateau de Rambouillet on the outskirts of Paris for a weekend of intimate conversation with only a few hundred officials and journalists in attendance.Not surprisingly, the reaction from the G7/8 leaders to the violence and death in Genoa was swift and severe. They issued a statement condemning the violence and the few who had corrupted the event for the many who had come in peace to make their democratic voice heard. Backed by the citizens of Genoa, who saw their town trashed by anarchists and alien invaders, they supported the hard pressed security forces, who had to call upon untrained reservists at the last moment to cope with the massive hordes and those intent on injury. Yet, as the G8 leaders witnessed the violence, the way it distracted them and the media from the serious substance of the summit, and the predictable reaction from hard-pressed security forces, they quickly concluded that their next summit would have to be a very different affair.Thus the prime minister of Canada, Jean Chretien, as host of the next summit, switched the 2002 venue from its intended site in urban, easily accessible downtown Ottawa to an isolated mountainous resort in remote Kananaskis, Alberta. The dominant mood behind the retreat to Kananaskis was a desire to go 'back to basics' - if not all the way to the 1975 model, then at least to 1981 when Canada hosted its first summit in the serene rustic sanctuary of the world's largest log cabin at Montebello, Quebec. …
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Apr 1, 2007
Roland G Fryer 
Open Access
