Trudeau’s four-day trip to Europe racks up $71,000 food bill

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

“It would have been cheaper for each member of the prime minister’s delegation to go to the Keg, order a prime rib steak, a Caesar salad, baked garlic shrimp and a bottle of pinot noir for every meal.”

Break out the DVD player and aerate a few bottles of the 2015 Riesling, because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has an important work trip.

The food bill for Trudeau’s four-day trip to Italy and Switzerland this June cost more than $71,000, including at least $43,000 spent on airplane food alone, according to the records.

That works out to an average meal cost of $145. Add it up and the total food bill averaged more than $1,700 per member of the Canadian delegation.

To put that in context: the average Canadian family of four spends about $1,400 on food per month, according to Canada’s Food Price Report.

“The per person food bill for Trudeau and his entourage on this trip was more than the average Canadian family spends on groceries in a month,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “It would have been cheaper for each member of the prime minister’s delegation to go to the Keg, order a prime rib steak, a Caesar salad, baked garlic shrimp and a bottle of pinot noir for every meal.”

The total taxpayer tab for the four-day trip came to nearly $1 million, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation from the Department of National Defence and the Privy Council Office.

The cost of the trip could be even higher, as “some accommodations were covered by Global Affairs Canada,” according to the records.

Trudeau travelled to Apulia, Italy, and Lucerne, Switzerland, between June 13 and 16, 2024, to attend a G7 Summit and a Summit on Peace in Ukraine.

All told, the trip cost Canadian taxpayers at least $918,000, according to the records.

Prior to take-off, government bureaucrats purchased $812 worth of junk food from a grocery store – including Red Bull, pop (Pepsi, Coke, Sprite), chocolate bars (Kit Kats, Twix’s, Reece’s Pieces) and candy (Swedish Berries, Fuzzy Peaches).

Government bureaucrats also swung by a record store and purchased $102 worth of DVDs for the flight, according to the records.

The purchases included the first season of Wednesday, a supernatural coming-of-age TV show based on the Addams Family, Madame Web, a superhero film, the sci-fi thriller Chronicle, and Witness, a 1995 crime movie starring Harrison Ford.

During the flights, the passengers were served meals that would be at home on the menu of a fine dining restaurant, alongside four types of wine – a 2021 Chardonnay, a 2015 Riesling, a 2018 Baco Noir and a 2021 Merlot.

Meals included veal piccata Milanese with potato, buttered green peas and broccoli, and lamb ribs with whole grain mustard sauce, rice pilaf and sauteed spinach.

Other dinner options included cheese ravioli with rose sauce, roasted red peppers and parmesan cheese, grilled chicken with lemon caper sauce, mashed potatoes and glazed carrots, and beef stroganoff with buttered noodles and snow peas.

For dessert, passengers chose between raspberry cheesecake coulis, chocolate and pistachio cake and Swiss chocolate cake.

“I like Sydney Sweeney as much as the next guy, but maybe Trudeau could do some actual work or download a movie on Netflix the next time he flies, instead of billing taxpayers for a DVD copy of Madame Web,” Terrazzano said. “While he’s at it, maybe Trudeau could forgo the Swiss chocolate cake while Canadians back home are lining up at food banks in record numbers.”

Trudeau travelled with an entourage ranging from 36 to 41 people during the four-day trip, including two coordinators of digital and creative content, a videographer, and a photographer, according to the records.

This is far from the first time a short trip for Trudeau meant a big bill for taxpayers.

Trudeau’s six-day trip to the Indo-Pacific region in September 2023 included more than $223,000 spent on airplane food, according to records obtained by the CTF.

That entire trip came with a taxpayer tab of nearly $2 million.

In 2022, Stewart Wheeler, who was Canada’s chief of protocol at the time, told a Parliamentary committee the government would bring down the cost of international travel.

“We recognize that the system that we had in place was not delivering the kind of oversight and control that Canadian taxpayers deserve,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler’s comments came after Governor General Mary Simon spent $100,000 on inflight catering during a nine-day trip to the Middle East in March 2022.

“The government promised to bring the cost of international travel down, but taxpayers are still getting stuck with outrageous bills,” Terrazzano said. “The government needs to figure out how to fly overseas without spending more on food in a few days than four families spend on groceries in an entire year.”

Related Topics:#CanadianTaxpayersFederation #RyanThorpe $145AverageMealCost 000FoodBill Trudeau'sTripToEurope Trudeau$71

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As Donald Trump, who will be sworn in as president on Monday, threatens to impose tariffs on Canadian exports including oil and natural gas, the calls from some Canadian politicians and analysts for greater energy trade diversification grow louder. However, these calls highlight a hard truth—Canada has repeatedly foregone opportunities to reduce our dependence on the United States by cancelling already approved pipelines and failing to approve new pipeline and LNG projects that could have increased our access to global markets.

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Director, Natural Resource Studies, Fraser Institute

Jason Clemens

Executive Vice President, Fraser Institute

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There’s no single perfect measure of economic success. However, growth in inflation-adjusted per-person GDP—an indicator of living standards and incomes—remains an important and broad measure. In short, it measures how quickly the economy is growing while adjusting for inflation and population growth.

Back when he was first running for prime minister in 2015, Trudeau recognized the importance of long-term economic growth, often pointing to slow growth under his predecessor Stephen Harper. On the campaign trail, Trudeau blasted Harper for having the “worst record on economic growth since R.B. Bennett in the depths of the Great Depression.”

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Trudeau’s government acted on this premise, boosting spending and running deficits—but Trudeau’s approach did not move the needle on growth. In fact, things went from bad to worse. Annual per-person GDP growth under Trudeau (0.3 per cent) was even worse than under Harper.

The reasons for weak economic growth (under Harper and Trudeau) are complicated. But when it comes to performance, there’s no disputing that Trudeau’s record is worse than any long-serving prime minister in recent history. According to our recent study published by the Fraser Institute, which compared the growth performance of the five most recent long-serving prime ministers, annual per-person GDP growth was highest under Chrétien followed by Martin, Mulroney, Harper and Justin Trudeau.

Of course, some defenders will blame COVID for Trudeau’s poor economic growth record, but you can’t reasonably blame the steep but relatively short pandemic-related recession for nearly a decade of stagnation.

There’s no single perfect measure of economic performance, but per-person inflation-adjusted economic growth is an important and widely-used measure of economic success and prosperity. Despite any claims to the contrary, Justin Trudeau’s legacy on economic growth is—in historical terms—dismal. All Canadians should hope that his successor has more success and oversees faster growth in the years ahead.