CTV.ca reporter Geoff Nixon is covering the G8/G20 summits and will be filing reports hourly in this notebook column. Check back on the website for updates.

Toronto the Good, or Toronto the Bad?

It will be interesting to see what makes the news on foreign stations with the violent anti-G20 protests that took place in Toronto on Saturday afternoon.

Inside the International Broadcast Centre, reporters could be seen gathered around TV screens watching the chaos downtown where black-clad protesters lit fires and smashed windows.

To be fair though, lots of reporters were watching their beloved World Cup soccer games, too.

Five summits makes Harper a G8 veteran?

It's over.

The Huntsville,Ont.,-hosted G8 has finished and it's time for the leaders to make their way to Toronto for the G20.

In his end-of-session remarks, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made reference to the "generational change" he'd seen occur in the G8.

Harper has attended five G8 summits since becoming prime minister in 2006, which makes him one of the G8's most senior leaders. While five years seems like a short time to be a veteran of anything, five years in politics evidently can be a long time.

The current crop of G8 leaders -- which includes two new recruits in the past two months -- is the most direct in its discussions and the most united in purpose that he has seen, Harper said.

The prime minister also said he would "seriously doubt" that the Muskoka G8 would be the last hosted on North American soil.

France on deck for next G8 meeting

Next time around, they’ll meet in France.

The last line of the communiqué signed by G8 leaders in Huntsville, Ont., said they accepted the offer of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to attend next year’s summit in France.

But that was expected.

The G8 countries rotate that hosting of the annual summit and since Canada held its first G8 in 1981, France has always held the meeting the following year.

The last time France hosted the G8 when it was held in Evian, France in June 2003.

 

You can see them floating around on the shoulders of  visiting journalists who are Toronto to cover the leaders' summits.

Red, white and Velcro, they are shiny swag bags with a single strap. They are filled with pamphlets about Toronto some pens, an iPhone cover, a steel bottle that says "Canada 2010", a notepad and some commemorative G8 and G20 pins.

And the bottle in the bag? It appears to be a small 50-millitre bottle of maple syrup shaped like a Maple Leaf.

Other than that, they're not too exciting.

Why won't G8 countries reveal their donations?

Why are G8 countries so reluctant to say what they have pledged to give to the child-and-maternal health initiative being pushed at this summit?

Canada announced yesterday that it would provide $2.85 billion for the initiative over a five-year period and Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the combined donations of G8 nations, as well as non-G8 countries and other organizations total $7.3 billion over the same time period.

But on Saturday morning, there is still very little word about who gave what.

Asked if information was available on the individual donations, Harper spokesperson Dimitri Soudas told reporters should check with individual delegations to get the totals.

The White House website says the U.S. will contribute $1.346 billion over the next two years, pending "Congressional appropriations."

A Japanese newspaper reported yesterday that Prime Minister Naoto Kan's government would pledge $500 million, though a spokesperson for the country's ministry of foreign affairs would not comment on the report's accuracy.

While some countries may not want to take any flak for not giving enough, the question remains: won't people find out what they gave eventually?

The Wizard of Huntsville?

To me, it was a Wizard of Oz-like moment.

At a morning news conference, Dimitri Soudas, the spokesperson for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Len Edwards, the deputy minister of foreign affairs and Harper's personal G8 representative, filled in reporters about the remaining agenda for the G8 and what happened during meetings last night.

Speaking from Huntsville, Ont., the government representatives answered questions from the reporters who were granted access to cover the G8 up close at the Deerhurst Resort. (The rest of us are in Toronto at the International Broadcast Centre, watching video of what is happening up north.)

 

Before the session wrapped up, Soudas and Edwards took a couple of questions from a pair of reporters in Toronto.

They spoke into a microphone and looked up to the faces overhead as they asked their questions.

With the video screen so high up and the reporters down below, it reminded me of that scene where Dorothy et al. go to meet the Wizard. Though this scene was in Toronto, not Oz, and neither on-screen speaker was a semi-translucent head floating in the air.

I think it was all about eye-level. The people on the ground in Toronto were looking up, while the people high-up on screen (being broadcast from Huntsville) were looking straight ahead.

Maybe I'm crazy. You'll have to check out the photo and decide for yourself.

 Chinese press offer close coverage of G20, Hu visit

The visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to Canada appears to be getting a lot of coverage in the Chinese press.

The China Daily website has several G20-related stories and there's a lot of video and print coverage on the China Central Television website, too.

But there are always perils to reporting on tight deadlines at international summits like the G8 and G20 this weekend, as there is a lot of information to take in.

Case-in-point, check out the CCTV website photo of Hu alongside House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken and Senate Speaker Noel Kinsella -- though the caption says he is a guy named Warren Kinsella, the same name as a well-known Liberal strategist.

While both Kinsellas are known on the Hill, the guy in the photo is definitely not the latter Liberal.