G-7 motto: Please pass the seal (Feb. 4)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
I’m not going to be part of the G-7 global financial ministers meeting Friday, mainly because I’ve never grown fond of seal and caribou meat.
The G-7 ministers — the financial poo-bahs of the world’s biggest economies — will be meeting in Iqalut, a city of 7,000 hardy residents on Canada’s northern Tundra.
The ministers and their factotums — some 500 in all — will be having to squeeze into just 300 hotel rooms — all that Iqaluit has — along with some dorm rooms.
It will not be the usual G-7 meeting, at which the people who run the world’s big economies get together to decide how to keep capitalism in business.
They usually do this in larger cities well equipped for big shots to come in and throw money around. As you might imagine, meeting in Iqaluit did not meet with universal approval among the muck-a-mucks. As long as the meeting was being held in Canada, many of the ministers wondered, why wasn’t it scheduled for Montreal or Toronto?
The Canadian finance minister, whose office made the arrangements to shoehorn the G-7 into Iqalut, said he thought it might be fun for them to rub elbows with people who have a different kind of sophistication. For example, they will be meeting Inuit people tired of minus-20-degree weather who think global warming is a heck of a good idea.
Also, Iqaluit may be a lot safer. When the G-7, G-8, and G-20 ministers meet in larger cities, they often are greeted by demonstrators who try to tear the towns to bits. That won’t happen in Iqaluit. Hardly any demonstrator is going to want to go up there. If they do, they will have to face down rifle-toting snowmobile drivers.
On the menu: Seal, caribou and other wild game delicacies. As I said, I’m staying here and ordering pizza.
