TORONTO — It is the worst kept secret of G8 summits and more often than not, the bearer of broken promises.

So there will be few who will be astonished if Saturday's final G8 communique causes few ripples beyond the sherpas and their official delegations that have been cooking up its contents for months now.

Fuelling the cynicism is the fact that much of the contents of this year's document was leaked more than a month ago.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper filled in the only unknown detail of Canada's signature child and maternal health centrepiece -- the cost. He raised $5 billion in new money, which includes his own country's $1.1 billion contribution.

Harper has branded this gathering the "accountability summit," and released a framework before the leaders arrived to track promises kept -- and broken -- in the future.

"We must stick to our commitments because this calls into question our credibility," the prime minister said Saturday as the G8 wrapped.

That accountability may be easier tracked than delivered. All of the G8 countries are compelled to deal with swelling deficits and voters in most countries who are uneasy about profligate public spending. The political will to help poorer countries has been eroded in traditionally generous countries such as Britain and Germany where David Cameron and Angela Merkel head coalition governments.

You don't have to look very hard, or very far to track the broken promises of the past.

At last year's Italian-hosted G8 summit, the leaders committed to a new $22 billion fund for food security. So far, they've anted up only $880 million.

"What these governments like is place-holders -- that they announce the title of a program. They're not accountable despite the claim this is an accountability summit," says Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a special adviser the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

As Sachs thumbed his way through his leaked copy of the communique recently, he said the language the leaders used recognized the importance of the reaching the UN Millennium Development Goals on helping poor mothers and children in the Third World.

"Politicians can play with words and hope that the publics buy it, but it doesn't stop people from dying, it doesn't stop the hunger, it doesn't stop these problems. If we're serious about all this, we would have a very serious accounting and a soul searching and then a very specific way to follow up," said Sachs.

The 2005 Gleneagles summit hosted by Britain has produced other broken promises that hang over this year's Canadian G8.

The G8 will fall $14 billion short on its 2005 aid pledge of $25 billion to Africa.

And it is nowhere near fulfilling its 2005 promise to ensure that every AIDS patient in the world would get access to life-saving treatment.

So far, only four million are receiving treatment, while another nine million that need treatment are not getting it.

"One of the biggest promises that is on the line this year . . . and that's the promise around HIV and AIDS," said Dave Toycen, president of World Vision Canada.

"One of the issues that's emerged is this whole issue of broken promises."