OTTAWA -
Karl Rove, a U.S. Republican operative so well-known his name has become a political adjective, is coming to Toronto for a "Faith in Business Leaders" conference to coincide with the official G20 summit.
The guest of evangelist organizer Charles McVety -- whose conference theme appears to be an alleged G20 plot for "one world" government -- Rove will be about as welcome to embattled Prime Minister Stephen Harper as protesting progressives.
Harper's Conservative government has been getting it from left and right over $1.2-billion price tag for the G8 and G20 summits.
It has also suffered port-side attacks over issues such as African aid, deep-sixing the Robin Hood bank tax and refusing to fund abortion as part of a maternal health initiative for the developing world.
Rove, the Republican mastermind behind president George W. Bush, won't exactly be riding to Harper's rescue.
For starters, all things Bush remain toxic in Canadian public opinion, according to pollsters.
The Economist, an influential British magazine that Harper has quoted from and said he likes to read, likely did the Conservative government no favour this week with an article that suggested Canada is importing U.S. Republicanism just as President Barack Obama is adopting some Canadian-style policies.
Critics of Harper often ascribe "Rovian" tactics -- a pejorative term that's synonymous with highly aggressive, message-controlled and truth-challenged politics -- to his minority government. Having the real deal in town during Harper's showcase international event will give those critics a timely reminder.
But Rove, McVety and others at the so-called "G-20 Summit for Faith and Business Leaders" won't exactly be singing Harper's praises.
"We are very concerned that G20 world leaders' wild spending is putting our future in jeopardy," McVety, who heads the Canada Christian College where his parallel conference takes place June 25-27, said in a news release Friday.
"The moral cost to our children may be catastrophic. Mr. Rove's common-sense approach is a voice that leaders should take heed."
The conference will also hear from Grant Jeffrey, an evangelical author whose books include "Armageddon," "Final Warning" and "Countdown to the Apocalypse."
"G20 global governance and one world economic system will be two of the topics Grant will address," McVety says on the conference website.
The site's home page, www.g20.ca, carries a disclaimer in small print: "Not officially affiliated with the 2010 G20 Toronto World Leaders Summit."
The site links to an essay McVety wrote on "one world" government after Harper's appearance at the Davos Summit in Switzerland in January. McVety accuses Harper of being in on the plot.
"All of these wonderful words of co-operation, shared responsibility, common purpose for the good of mankind sound so beautiful but eerily familiar," McVety writes.
"These are the ideals of communism, socialism, Marxism and other failed systems of government ....
"The global economic 'social machinery' is now in place. All that needs to be done is to develop a world-wide will to subject ourselves to them."
