WITHOUT A DOUBT, much is being made – and appropriately so – of the enormous expense attached to the G8 and G20 summits in Huntsville and Toronto, respectively, later this month.

However, we doubt that when it’s all over much more will be said about the man-made “lake” supposedly simulating a corner of Muskoka in a media centre based in the Canadian National Exhibition grounds, a two-hour drive from Huntsville and a couple of kilometres from the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where the G20 sessions are to take place.

Our prediction is that the main stories will be about how little was really accomplished by summits involving literally thousands of delegates and subordinates, as well as about whether all the enormous expenditure for security was necessary, or would have been necessary if the two sessions had been held at a single location.

Although there’s little doubt that Huntsville was too small a centre to cope effectively with the hordes attending the G20 conflabs, there’s surely just as little doubt that Ontario has urban centres that could have acted as hosts without the need for so much disruption and expenditure.

Our favourite three candidates as G8/G20 hosts happen to be Sudbury, Peterborough and Kingston.

All three are cities with a lot more to offer than long histories. For one thing, all three happen to have universities – Laurentian in Sudbury, Trent in Peterborough and Queen’s in Kingston – which we think would have been ideal sites for the sessions themselves.

And all three cities have a lot of hotels and motels, while Peterborough among the three might be said to have the added advantage of being close enough for the delegates to commute from Toronto.