Judge refuses to release controversial G-20 report

A court has said it won't order the release of a controversial auditor general's report into government spending during last year's G8 summit.

A Federal Court of Canada judge ruled Thursday against activists who were seeking the release of the report before Monday's election, saying the group should have filed its suit weeks earlier.

Warmington: G20 riot should never have happened

Why didn’t Chief Bill Blair and his senior command just let their officers arrest the Black Bloc when they had the chance before the rampaging began?

Turns out there was no need to sneak in any fancy wartime laws!

There are aerial pictures of these punks all huddled together.

G20 inquest to consider unlawful killing charge

Jurors at the inquest into the death of Ian Tomlinson will consider whether the actions of a police officer amounted to unlawful killing, a coroner has said.

The jury must decide whether Pc Simon Harwood acted illegally and directly caused the death of Mr Tomlinson at the G20 protests in London on 1 April 2009.

The G-20’s Empty Gestures

The world’s 20 most important finance ministers and 20 most important central bankers traveled to Washington this month from every part of the globe to accomplish, predictably, exactly nothing.

The subject of the G-20’s recent meeting was “global imbalances.” According to the communiqué issued by the group, the meeting focused on developing a procedure for identifying which G-20 countries have “persistently large imbalances” and why they have them. This delicate analytical task was assigned to the International Monetary Fund, which is to complete its work before the ministers’ next meeting in October.

Lawsuit seeks release of G8 spending documents

An online activist group has filed a lawsuit asking the Federal Court to order the release of a report into government spending during last year's G8 and G20 summits.

Auditor General Sheila Fraser has steadfastly refused to release the final report until after the election. However, drafts of the report that leaked to the media suggested the government misled Parliament about the true cost of the world leaders summit, held last June in Toronto and near Huntsville, Ont.

India to raise concerns over easy money policy at G-20

At the G-20 Sherpa’s meeting later this month, India is set to highlight external risks such as aggressive policy action and high public debt in advanced economies that pose a risk to its growth and create inflationary pressures.

“While domestic factors are largely conducive for maintaining a high growth, external risks such as low interest rates are leading to a surge of capital flows into India. This is ultimately leading to an asset price bubble and soaring commodity prices within the country, making it difficult to curb prices,” a finance ministry official said.

Ahead of G-20, India offers nuke help

India has proposed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it can send experts to deal with the Fukushima nuclear incident and the emerging fallouts even as G-20 countries are set to discuss a new universal framework for nuclear safety ahead of the group’s summit in Cannes in November t his year.

Ian Tomlinson died from internal bleeding, says third pathologist

A forensic pathologist has told an inquest that the only plausible explanation for the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests was internal bleeding from an injured liver.

Dr Kenneth Shorrock, who was instructed by the Metropolitan Police after one of its officers was shown on film shoving Tomlinson to the ground, said the injury to the organ was "consistent" with the footage.

The ‘chilling effect’ of kettling on freedoms

The police’s use of kettling to police protest has come under fire from human rights campaign group Liberty, who argue that it undermines trust between protesters and police and has a “chilling effect” on people’s right to freedom of expression and assembly.

CANADA DAYBOOK: Election Campaign Second Half, Teck Earnings

The federal election campaign entered its second half following the leaders’ debates last week. Teck Resources Ltd. is estimated to post a first-quarter profit of 76 cents a share.

WHAT TO WATCH: *Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff kicked off the second half of their campaigns for the May 2 federal election in Ontario last week.

G-20 unified on coping with Japan risks

The Group of 20 countries have expressed their intent to jointly support Japan's reconstruction, underscoring the fact that the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake poses a new concern for the global economy.

The prolonged stagnation of the Japanese economy, which took a direct hit from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, could negatively impact the global economy. Each country shared a sense of crisis and placed high expectations on Japan's early reconstruction.

G20 agrees to take actions to reduce downside risks

Downside risks remain in the global economy, even as the recovery is broadening and becoming more self-sustained with increasingly robust private demand growth, the G-20 countries have said.

After the meeting of finance ministers and Central Bank Governors, the group comprising most influential economies in the world, issued a joint communique which they agreed to remain vigilant and take necessary actions to reduce risks to the global recovery.

Trichet: G-20 Didn’t Discuss Greek Debt Restructuring

There was no discussion of a possible restructuring of Greek sovereign debt at Friday’s meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors of the Group of 20 leading developed and emerging economies, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said.

G-20 to draw up tentative debt, surplus rules

The Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers will finalize specific measures to use to gauge mismatches or imbalances between export-oriented, creditor nations and consumption focused, debtor economies, a senior U.S. Treasury official said Tuesday.

Untimely Leak From Canada's Auditor General

You don't have to be an auditor-general to know some of the Harper Government's spending around last year's G-20 and G-8 event in Ontario was wasteful, partisan and even eridiculous. But that certainly is not the sort of message a party leader wants the electorate to be reminded of mere weeks before an election.

G-20 wants Japan revival plan

G-20 finance ministers will ask Japan for a plan to revive its economy on fears that the nation's disaster could dent global growth, said Takatoshi Kato, a former IMF deputy managing director.

OECD official expresses hope for Chile to join G-20

A top official with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Tuesday that the "impressive economic and political development" Chile has achieved in recent years might help the nation join the Group of 20 major economies (G-20).

New G20 Bank Rules Insufficient To Fix Financial System

New banking rules agreed upon by global financial leaders aren't sufficient to ward off the type of financial crisis the world is still recovering from, the International Monetary Fund warned Wednesday.

To help fix the problem, the fund is proposing new tools to measure the impact a financial institution can have on the system as a whole. Once authorities have a good picture of the systemic importance of a firm, they could then confidently require a company to pay a proportional fee to guard the entire system.

Does the G-20 Even Care About the Environment?

CALGARY, April 5 /CNW/ - In a paper released today by The School of Public Policy, Professor Barry Carin examines the prospect of G-20 leaders taking hard action on environmental issues at upcoming meetings and finds that it is unlikely that environmental policy will be a major agenda item for the next meeting in France in 2011, or at future meetings.

A modest proposal for the G-20

BEIJING: In March, at a meeting in Beijing organised by Columbia University's Initiative for Policy Dialogue and China's Central University of Finance and Economics, scholars and policymakers discussed how to reform the international monetary system.

After all, even if the system did not directly cause the recent imbalances and instability in the global economy, it proved ineffective in addressing them.

G20 keeps up snail's pace of global monetary reform

Another month, another inconclusive meeting of G20 finance ministers: reform of the international monetary reform is proving a hard, thankless slog.

True, Thursday's seminar in the eastern city of Nanjing confirmed the consensus that changes are needed to put the world economy on a firmer financial footing, keep a closer eye on capital flows and ensure the global monetary order better reflects the clout of China and other emerging giants.

Italy Finance Minister: Crisis Galvanizing Europe, G-20 Obsolete

The global financial and economic crisis is galvanizing Europe into furthering the project of a political union and may trigger spreading unrest elsewhere in the world, Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti said Saturday.

We are seeing a "colossal restructuring of the political architecture of Europe," Tremonti told central and commercial bankers, business leaders and politicians from around Europe at a conference in this northern Italian lakeside town.

China Meeting Highlights Currency Conflict

Top officials at a meeting of the world's major developed and emerging economies offered starkly different views on exchange rates and other elements of the international monetary system, underlining the challenges facing efforts to find a new global financial architecture.

Highlighting the tensions at the one-day meeting of Group of 20 officials here, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner emphasized the importance of flexible exchange rates in prepared remarks that were a thinly veiled criticism of China's currency policy—which Beijing had insisted shouldn't be discussed at the meeting.