Categories: Capital Diary

Paul Martin on obsoleteness

Former Prime Minister Paul Martin spoke at the University of Ottawa about the G8…

by Mitchel Raphael on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 11:29pm - 6 Comments

Former Prime Minister Paul Martin spoke at the University of Ottawa about the G8 being obsolete and the future belonging to the G20. The talk was presented by the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs in partnership with the Centre for International Policy Studies and Library and Archives Canada.

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University of Ottawa president Allan Rock.

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Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale.

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Ian Anderson, a Young Liberal and a student at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, was one of the event’s promoters.

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Grad student Andy Best, who Anderson has been trying to convert into becoming a card-carrying Liberal.

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The audience.

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Mugs from the archives.

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  • hosertohoosier

    See what Martin doesn’t understand is that the reason you need something like a G-7 is collective action. The UN doesn’t work, Kyoto failed (the only countries to reduce emissions would have reduced them anyway), NATO sort of works, the G-7 kind of works, while bilateral institutions work quite well. What does that tell you? That the “too many cooks spoil the broth” (or rather Olsen’s Logic of Collective Action) holds in international relations.

    Now it IS true that with the rise of China, India and Brazil, the G-7 is becoming increasingly irrelevant. The solution isn’t to build a non-functioning G-20, it is to replace the smaller members of the G-7 with the newly industrializing ones. Canada is first to go on that list.

    Canada is something like 2.5% of global GDP. We are a market leader in no important industries. We have minimal military power and 1/30th the population of China. In other words, the only way to make something like a G-20 workable is to get rid of Canada.

    • Critical Reasoning

      The G-7 isn’t going anywhere. The ideal solution to a “too many cooks” problem is probably a G-10 or G-11, but that isn’t going to happen either.

    • archangel

      And I was nodding my head in agreement, until I realized you wrote “cooks” — not “crooks”.

  • Wayne

    Typical Liberal philosophy taken to it’s logical extreme = when in doubt make the committee bigger! The thing is the bigger you make them the more they become less and less relevant and turn into photo op’s only with everyone reading pre-prepared speeches and little communication really going on which then in turn always leads to more and more staff behind the scenes to get any real work done resulting in only bureaucrats gaining anything at all from the exercise.

  • madeyoulook

    Paul Martin on obsoleteness

    Nice line. Was it intentional?

  • viewdrix

    What sort of statement could this post possibly be making?

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