Taxpayers were charged almost $207,000 to fly Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his staff and family on trips aboard a Royal Canadian Air Force jet last April, according to access to information documents.
That included the $52,000 cost for the Bombardier CC-144D Challenger that took Trudeau, Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau and their three children to Montana for an Easter weekend vacation at the Big Sky ski and snowboard resort. The couple has since separated.
Based on the total costs and length of corresponding flight times listed in the documents, which were released under the access to information law, the cost-per-hour for the Challenger jet is $6,340.
Before the pandemic, records about Trudeau’s trips in July and August 2019 showed that the average hourly cost was $5,636. He flies aboard military jets for security reasons.
The request about the Montana trip specifically sought details of any cost recovery, but no records were provided. Government policy states that when the travel is for personal reasons, staff ask a travel agent to quote the lowest commercial fare on a comparable flight and then issue an invoice for that amount.
In September 2019, Trudeau was invoiced $2,450.73 after a family vacation to Tofino. However, that did not cover a half-hour of jet use.
The documents from the Department of National Defence (DND) show there were five “missions” on which Trudeau travelled during 15 days in April.
The trip to Montana came after a series of April 2-6 photo ops in Quebec with Premier Francois Legault and Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante after an ice storm, a speaking engagement at the Eurasia Group consultancy’s summit in Toronto and a tour of a Honda factory in Alliston, Ont.
Fifteen hours after returning to Ottawa from Bozeman, Mont., Trudeau left aboard the Challenger for another campaign-style trip to Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina and Richmond from April 11-16.
It included a meeting in Toronto with Ukraine Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, a grocery rebate program photo op in Regina and Indigenous health funding announcement and town hall meeting with the Squamish Nation in North Vancouver.
Trudeau made a one-day trip to London, Ont., on April 21 to announce a subsidized Volkswagen electric vehicle battery plant. From April 26-28, it was New York City for the Global Citizen Now summit. On April 30, a one-day Toronto trip for the Vaisakhi Parade.
Documents also show that Anita Anand, who was minister of national defence at the time, charged $121,728 for an April 20-22 round trip to Germany with three staff members, Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre and four senior Canadian Armed Forces officers to the headquarters of the U.S. Army Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, and a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at the Ramstein Air Base.
Gov. Gen. Mary Simon’s only trip of the month was April 25-27 to Yellowknife, which cost $50,720 for the Challenger jet.
