Maximum tinfoil headgear in Ottawa this weekend

From June 8-11, the secretive, so-called Bilderberg group is meeting in the west end of Ottawa.

Influential world leaders such as Queen Beatrix of Holland, Henry Kissinger, and David Rockefeller are meeting for the closed four-day meeting at the luxury Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata.

The high-profile membership of the "Bilderbergers" and the secret nature of their annual conference has made them fodder for conspiracy woo-woos worldwide. Indeed, the tinfoil-hat-wearing crowd has also descended on Ottawa, including Jim Tucker of American Free Press and Alex Jones - the latter supposedly being detained at the airport and interrogated for hours.

The stated purpose of the Bilderbergers is to foster good transatlantic relations: the first meeting in 1954 was convened to smooth over some latent European anti-Americanism by inviting representatives from both sides of the Atlantic to discuss the common threat of communism. While the location, guest list, and general agenda are public information, there are no minutes kept of the meetings and participants are pledged to secresy. The Bilderbergers meet in secret so as not to be unduly pressured by the media.

According to the conspiracy nuts, however, the purpose of the group could be anything from fixing commodity prices, to deciding the outcome of presidential elections, to pulling the strings of national governments to conform to the Bilderbergers' own nefarious agenda.

As it happens, a few years ago I worked at that end of town. I seem to recall that there was a pretty decent Vietnamese restaurant a few blocks from the Brookstreet, in case any of the locals want to chat up Henry Kissinger.