Like a dog on a bone, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is doubling down on getting Gov.-Gen. Mary Simon to rein in her free-spending ways and publicly contain her extravagance by posting her expenses.
Carpaccio anyone? Beef Wellington?
Martini with an olive?
The focus of the federation’s frustration, of course, is Simon’s week-long trip to the Middle East late last year with an assortment of dignitaries, during which nearly $100,000 was spent on in-flight meals.
Simon insisted the “meals are not very extravagant on these trips” and “they’re pretty much like airline meals.”
Airline meals? Indeed, they did have “eggs” and they did have “omelettes” as Simon’s deputy secretary told a Parliamentary committee, but the omelettes came poshed-up with “Boursin cheese, sliced chives and sundried tomatoes, a side of grilled artisan pork sausages and sauteed button mushrooms.”
The flight menus included “beef Wellington with red jus” and “pan fried chicken scallopini in creamy mushroom wine reduction sauce.” Buttery chicken tikka masala, apple and cranberry stuffed pork tenderloin, beef carpaccio and about $190 worth of “VIP sliced fruit” were also on the menus.
As the federation put it, that’s not exactly “like airline meals” that most Canadians are accustomed to, as Simon had claimed.
The bureaucrats tasked with trotting the vice-regal around the globe repeatedly told the committee that they could not provide the in-flight catering receipts because they’d been lost.
The trouble with that, however, is that the lost receipts had already been found by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
And second to that trouble, the Office of the Secretary to the Governor General is not subject to access-to-information requests. That needs to change, just as the governor-general and her office need to be part of transparency legislation.
Extravagance has its limits.
Gone are the days when a Tory cabinet minister named Bev Oda could be driven out of politics because she expensed a $16 glass of orange juice at London’s Savoy Hotel while on a business trip.
“Our government believes very much that all ministers must respect taxpayer dollars,” said the Conservative government’s House leader at the time, Peter Van Loan, in response to a barrage of questions in the House of Commons. “The minister of course has repaid the costs in question.”
Today, however, we have the era of Liberal PM Justin Trudeau, where we instead have someone with the audacity to bunk up for a week in a $6,000 a night hotel room while attending the London funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
No one has yet to cough up who it was, and Liberal government House leader Mark Holland has yet to make a comment as Van Loan did when it came to Oda’s situation.
Still, that is the $42,000 question that taxpayers would like to see answered, (seven nights at $6,000 per) but the prime minister, too, is remaining mute.
When it comes to Mary Simon’s spendthrift ways, though, the CTF’s federal director Franco Terrazzano said, “politicians should push for budget cuts. That’s how a serious government would deal with frivolous spending.
“If bureaucrats have so much money that they can blow nearly $100,000 on in-flight catering, then Rideau Hall doesn’t need $34 million from taxpayers every year.”
After being dragged back to committee, the bureaucrats promised to cut back on future flight costs. They say they will reduce meal options, limit special requests and offer “minimal” snacks.
“Drink garnishes will be eliminated from service,” the government’s chief of protocol Stewart Wheeler told the committee.
No martini with an olive? No twist of lemon?
Don’t laugh. Thirty years ago, American Airlines made a startling discovery. It determined that eliminating one olive from each passenger’s first-class salad plate would reduce costs by $40,000 a year.
The story made international headlines.
