Business
Charlottetown cabinet retreat cost taxpayers almost half-a-million
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Author: Ryan Thorpe
“Spending more than four hundred grand on a three-day retreat to tackle affordability is tone-deaf and unacceptable”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s three-day cabinet retreat to Prince Edward Island last summer cost taxpayers at least $412,000, according to government records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Figures contained within online proactive disclosures, discovered by the National Post, increased the total cost of the cabinet retreat to $485,196.
Trudeau and his cabinet ministers gathered at a waterfront hotel in Charlottetown, P.E.I., from Aug. 21-23, 2023. The retreat was aimed at tackling the affordability and housing crises facing Canadians.
Expenses from the retreat include $100,000 worth of hotel rooms, $22,000 spent on food and drink, and a $52,000 “banquet.”
“Spending more than four hundred grand on a three-day retreat to tackle affordability is tone-deaf and unacceptable,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Canadians don’t need politicians wasting this type of money, we need them to stop raising taxes that make life more expensive.”
At the cabinet retreat, Trudeau claimed they were “rolling up our sleeves to talk about affordability, to talk about economic growth for everyone, to talk about how we’re going to solve some of the housing challenges.”
Ministers also heard a presentation from the head of the B.C. thinktank Generation Squeeze, a leading proponent of the federal government implementing a home-equity tax. A home-equity tax would tax the money Canadians receive when selling their home.
“It seems like the Trudeau government’s only solution on affordability is to waste other people’s money flying around the country talking to each other,” Terrazzano said. “It’s a shame they don’t have offices in Ottawa, or Zoom accounts, so they could do some of this work without spending thousands of dollars.”
The records obtained by the CTF were released in response to an order paper question from member of Parliament Tracy Gray (Kelowna-Lake Country).
“Expenditures related to the cabinet retreat are as Nov. 27, 2023,” according to the records. “Some travel claims may still be outstanding. As a result, expenditures related to the cabinet retreat may increase slightly.”
The Charlottetown retreat was held nearly a year after the Trudeau government organized an earlier cabinet retreat in Vancouver, which was billed as an anti-inflation summit.
The three-day Vancouver retreat cost taxpayers more than $275,000, and saw Trudeau and his ministers drop tens of thousands of dollars at a café serving up an $88 “millionaire’s cut” steak and lobster plate.
During a press conference on the final day of the Charlottetown retreat, Trudeau acknowledged Canadians are “really worried” about the state of the country and “looking to blame anyone they can for it.”
“So yeah, it’s not an easy time to be a politician,” Trudeau said.
Trudeau announced no new plans to address the affordability or housing crises during the retreat.
“So yeah, it’s not an easy time to be a taxpayer,” Terrazzano said.
Fr0m LifeSiteNews
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been providing massive funds in the name of COVID despite the fact that Joe Biden admitted the ‘pandemic’ was over by 2022.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is withdrawing $11.4 billion in COVID funding to state and local health departments, non-government groups, and international recipients about two years after the U.S. government declared the COVID-19 “national emergency” over.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” HHS director of communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement, NBC News reported.
“HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.“
Despite the fact that former President Joe Biden admitted in 2022 that the COVID “pandemic” was over, Health and Human Services (HHS) has been continuing to allocate funds for COVID testing, “vaccines,” and “global COVID projects,” according to CDC talking points.
The funding cut comes as millions of dollars for other initiatives, including vaccine hesitancy research and HIV prevention, are slashed under new HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
HHS has made the greatest funding cutbacks government-wide, according to the Department of Government Efficiency’s website.
Dr. Robert Malone argued in 2023 that the only reason the Biden administration decided to end the national COVID “emergency” when it did is because of the congressional legislation seeking that end.
“The bottom line is that the imperial U.S. administrative state will never give up these unconstitutional powers until forced to do so,” Malone wrote.
For years, major corporations bragged about their wonderful Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. They’re good for business and morally correct, they said. So why are they now cutting those programs?
Robby Starbuck says these programs once got a lot of buy-in, because people wanted to be nice! But DEI came to mean much more than just being nice.
Starbuck says what it looked like in practice was “crazy trainings” and “overtly racist hiring practices.” Now lots of people agree with him.
Companies actually take notice when Starbuck tells his many followers about their DEI programs. Often the programs get dropped.
That’s the power of free speech.
After 40+ years of reporting, I now understand the importance of limited government and personal freedom.
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Libertarian journalist John Stossel created Stossel TV to explain liberty and free markets to young people.
Prior to Stossel TV he hosted a show on Fox Business and co-anchored ABC’s primetime newsmagazine show, 20/20. Stossel’s economic programs have been adapted into teaching kits by a non-profit organization, “Stossel in the Classroom.” High school teachers in American public schools now use the videos to help educate their students on economics and economic freedom. They are seen by more than 12 million students every year.
Stossel has received 19 Emmy Awards and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club. Other honors include the George Polk Award for Outstanding Local Reporting and the George Foster Peabody Award.
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