Business
King’s coronation cost taxpayers $534,000 and counting
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Author: Franco Terrazzano
Trudeau’s troupe spent $305,188 on accommodations at the Edwardian Pastoria Hotels Ltd., a high-end luxury hotel chain in London. They also spent $45,760 at the Great Scotland Yard Hotel and $15,881 at the Southampton Row Hotel.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Canadian delegation to King Charles III’s coronation racked up $534,675 in expenses during the three-day trip.
Final costs are expected to rise even higher as expenses are still being processed, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
“The King’s coronation is a big event, but that doesn’t mean taxpayers should be paying half-a-million dollars so more than 100 people can travel to England,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “It seems like this government goes out of its way to bring along as many people as possible and to stay in the fanciest hotels.”
Canada’s delegation was 102 people strong – including 87 travelling with Trudeau and 15 travelling with Governor General Mary Simon. That means the cost per traveller was $5,241 for the three-day trip.
Trudeau’s troupe spent $305,188 on accommodations at the Edwardian Pastoria Hotels Ltd., a high-end luxury hotel chain in London. They also spent $45,760 at the Great Scotland Yard Hotel and $15,881 at the Southampton Row Hotel.
Simon and her entourage spent $155,283 on rooms at the London & Regional hotel.
Bureaucrats bought $300 worth of wine and beer for the flights to London, then spent $555 at “Majestic Wine London” upon arrival, according to the records.
“Did taxpayers really need to pay for 102 people to travel to England, and did they each need to rack up an average bill of $5,000?” Terrazzano said. “And if bureaucrats want to delete a couple cold ones, they’re paid more than enough money to pick up the tab themselves.”
King Charles III acceded to the throne Sept. 8, 2022, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. His coronation was held at Westminster Abbey May 6, 2023.
In addition to Trudeau and Simon, the Canadian delegation included various bureaucrats, several Indigenous leaders, a handful of youth leaders and astronauts Jennifer Sidey-Gibbons and Jeremy Hanson, among others.
Canada also sent a sizeable delegation to Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral in September 2022, racking up nearly $400,000 in hotel costs alone.
Included among those costs was a $6,000-per-night luxury suite at the Corinthia Hotel, which came with a marble bathroom and “complimentary butler service.”
After bureaucrats refused to disclose who had stayed in the River Suite, the CTF filed an access-to-information request. In response, the government released the records, but redacted the name.
The CTF then launched a legal challenge to force the government to disclose who stayed in the suite.
Trudeau finally admitted he stayed in the $6,000 per-night luxury suite during President Joe Biden’s visit to Canada in March 2023.
Documents obtained by the Toronto Sun in February revealed that federal bureaucrats were worried about the cost of hotels for the King’s coronation in the aftermath of the earlier scandal over the $6,000-per-night luxury suite.
Writing to a bureaucrat at Global Affairs Canada, Davon Singh, Director of the Executive Office & Head of Visits at Canada’s High Commission in London, wondered if the size of the Canadian delegation should be reduced to save on costs.
“Should we look into reduced numbers or stick with the amount you’ve currently sent us?” Singh wrote.
“I think we should keep our current numbers,” read the response from the Visits Coordinator for Global Affairs Canada.
Business
Taxpayers release Naughty and Nice List
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
CBC President and CEO Catherine Tait tops the Taxpayer Naughty List for dishing out executive bonuses that cost more than the average Canadian worker makes in a year.
“Santa doesn’t like it when girls and boys are greedy, and forcing struggling taxpayers to pay for Santa-sized executive bonuses is as greedy as it gets,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “And Canadian diplomats are on the Naughty List too because Santa likes eggnog as much as the next guy, but even he knows Global Affairs Canada is sipping on a little too much Christmas spirit.
“For billing taxpayers $51,000 a month on booze, Global Affairs Canada bureaucrats find themselves on Santa’s Naughty List.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford made the Taxpayer Naughty List for extending political welfare after promising to scrap it. And for breaking his promise to cap property tax increases, Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham is also on the Naughty List.
For resigning over wasteful spending and saving taxpayers’ money in the process, former Kensington mayor Rowan Caseley tops the Taxpayer Nice List. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey also made the Nice List for cutting gas taxes and fighting the federal carbon tax.
“Santa is getting hammered by carbon tax bills on his reindeer barn, so Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lands on the Naughty List for making everything more expensive with his carbon tax,” said Kris Sims, CTF Alberta Director. “Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe made Santa’s good books for taking action against Trudeau’s carbon tax.”
You can find the entire 2024 Taxpayer Naughty and Nice List here.
Taxpayer Naughty List:
- CBC President & CEO Catherine Tait
- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
- Ontario Premier Doug Ford
- Global Affairs Canada
- Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham
- The entire federal bureaucracy
Taxpayer Nice List:
- Former Kensington Mayor Rowan Caseley
- Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe
- Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey
- Alberta Premier Danielle Smith
- Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux
Business
Biden announces massive new climate goals in final weeks, despite looming Trump takeover
From LifeSiteNews
Outgoing President Joe Biden announced a new climate target of reducing American carbon emissions from 61-66% over the next decade, even though President Trump would be able to undo it as soon as next month.
Outgoing President Joe Biden announced December 19 a new climate target of reducing American carbon emissions of more than 60% over the next decade, even though returning President Donald Trump would be able to undo it as soon as next month.
“Today, as the United States continues to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy, President Biden is announcing a new climate target for the United States: a 61-66 percent reduction in 2035 from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions,” the White House announced, the Washington Free Beacon reports. The new target will be formally submitted to the United Nations Climate Change secretariat.
“President Biden’s new 2035 climate goal is both a reflection of what we’ve already accomplished,” Biden climate adviser John Podesta added, “and what we believe the United States can and should achieve in the future.”
The announcement may be little more than a symbolic gesture in the end, however, as Trump is widely expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement upon resuming office in January, in the process voiding related climate obligations.
Trump formally pulled out of the Paris accords in August 2017, the first year of his first term, with then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley stating that the administration would be “open to re-engaging in the Paris Agreement if the United States can identify terms that are more favorable to it, its business, its workers, its people, and its taxpayers.”
Such terms were never reached, however, leaving America out until Biden re-committed the nation to the Paris Agreement on the first day of his presidency, obligating U.S. policy to new economic regulations to cut carbon emissions.
In June, the Trump campaign confirmed Trump’s intentions to withdraw from Paris again. At the time, Trump’s team was reportedly mulling a number of non-finalized drafts of executive orders to do so.
Left-wing consternation on the matter is based on certitude in “anthropogenic global warming” (AGW) or “climate change,” the thesis that human activity, rather than natural phenomena, is primarily responsible for Earth’s changing climate and that such trends pose a danger to the planet in the form of rising sea levels and weather instability.
Activists have long claimed there is a “97 percent scientific consensus” in favor of AGW, but that number comes from a distortion of an overview of 11,944 papers from peer-reviewed journals, 66.4 percent of which expressed no opinion on the question; in fact, many of the authors identified with the AGW “consensus” later spoke out to say their positions had been misrepresented.
AGW proponents suffered a blow in 2010 with the discovery that their leading researchers at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, East Anglia Climate Research Unit, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had engaged in widespread data manipulation, flawed climate models, misrepresentation of sources, and suppression of dissenting findings in order to make the so-called “settled science” say what climate activists wanted it to.
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