Economy
Trudeau drops $220,000 on airplane food

News release from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
You ever get the feeling the government is running a secret contest to see who can order up the most expensive meals while flying around the world?
Well if they are, we’ve got a new winner: The Right Honourable Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
After Governor General Mary Simon spent $100,000 on airplane food, Trudeau said, ‘Hold my beef Wellington’ and doubled the taxpayer tab.
All that and more in this week’s Taxpayer Waste Watch.
Bon apétit.
Franco.
Fine China, fancy feasts and a $220,000 taxpayer tab
Welcome to Air Trudeau, where the cares are free, the juice is freshly squeezed, the meals are served on fine China and the bill is sent to you.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his entourage spent $223,000 of your money on airplane food during a six-day tour of the Indo-Pacific region last fall, according to government records dug up by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Eating that much could wear a silver spoon right out.
To put things in perspective: that’s enough money to cover a month of groceries for 165 Canadian families, or buy 13,937 glasses of Bev Oda’s favourite orange juice.
But the bill gets big when this is the grocery list:
Beef brisket and parsley mashed potatoes with truffle oil. Pan fried beef tenderloin with port wine reduction sauce. Braised lamb shanks with steamed broccoli and boiled baby potatoes. Strawberry shortcake and baked cheesecake with pistachio brittle.
Sounds just like the meals you get on Air Canada or WestJet, right?
The records indicate staff were told Trudeau’s meals (and ONLY Trudeau’s meals) must be appropriately garnished and served on China dishware.
Pro-tip for the prime minister:
Have you seen your polling numbers lately? It might be tough to connect with the middle class while chowing down on braised lamb shanks, topped with a sprig of parsley and served on fine China.
Snacks offered onboard Air Trudeau included cured meats and artisanal cheeses, veggies and dip, and fresh papaya, pineapple, dragon fruit, watermelon and berries. And the juice served was noted as being “freshly-squeezed.”
A special request was put in for the plane to be stocked with Trudeau’s favourite brand of premium alkaline spring water, and staff picked up $900 worth of pop and chips before take-off. Trudeau and his entourage also spent $300 on movies and magazines.
Well we already know the prime minister doesn’t read his briefing notes, so it’s good he had the latest editions of the Jacobin and Mad Magazine to keep him occupied – it was a long flight, after all.
All told, the trip cost you $1.9 million and counting.
Trudeau has now claimed the top spot on our leaderboard for the most extravagant taxpayer-funded travel expenses, surpassing Governor General Mary Simon’s legendary March 2022 performance, when she gobbled up $100,000 worth of airplane food.
After details of Simon’s airplane extravaganza went public (courtesy of your friends at the CTF), a parliamentary committee summoned high-ranking bureaucrats to answer for the outrageous tab.
The bureaucrats pinkie promised to change the rules and stop frivolous spending.
Well clearly those efforts are going swimmingly…
The government set out to lower costs.
Then Trudeau doubled them.
Poilievre grills Trudeau about airplane feast in House of Commons
Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre grilled Trudeau about his $223,000 worth of airplane food expenses in the House of Commons.
Trudeau’s EV corporate welfare worse than you think
Federal and provincial governments are ponying up billions more in electric vehicle battery subsidies than the corporations themselves are spending to build their own factories.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report this week showing just how bad taxpayers are being taken to the cleaners on these corporate welfare deals.
Governments promised $52 billion to these corporations. The corporations are only spending $46 billion.
Does that sounds like a good deal to you?
Business
It Took Trump To Get Canada Serious About Free Trade With Itself

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Lee Harding
Trump’s protectionism has jolted Canada into finally beginning to tear down interprovincial trade barriers
The threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs and the potential collapse of North American free trade have prompted Canada to look inward. With international trade under pressure, the country is—at last—taking meaningful steps to improve trade within its borders.
Canada’s Constitution gives provinces control over many key economic levers. While Ottawa manages international trade, the provinces regulate licensing, certification and procurement rules. These fragmented regulations have long acted as internal trade barriers, forcing companies and professionals to navigate duplicate approval processes when operating across provincial lines.
These restrictions increase costs, delay projects and limit job opportunities for businesses and workers. For consumers, they mean higher prices and fewer choices. Economists estimate that these barriers hold back up to $200 billion of Canada’s economy annually, roughly eight per cent of the country’s GDP.
Ironically, it wasn’t until after Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement that it began to address domestic trade restrictions. In 1994, the first ministers signed the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), committing to equal treatment of bidders on provincial and municipal contracts. Subsequent regional agreements, such as Alberta and British Columbia’s Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement in 2007, and the New West Partnership that followed, expanded cooperation to include broader credential recognition and enforceable dispute resolution.
In 2017, the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) replaced the AIT to streamline trade among provinces and territories. While more ambitious in scope, the CFTA’s effectiveness has been limited by a patchwork of exemptions and slow implementation.
Now, however, Trump’s protectionism has reignited momentum to fix the problem. In recent months, provincial and territorial labour market ministers met with their federal counterpart to strengthen the CFTA. Their goal: to remove longstanding barriers and unlock the full potential of Canada’s internal market.
According to a March 5 CFTA press release, five governments have agreed to eliminate 40 exemptions they previously claimed for themselves. A June 1 deadline has been set to produce an action plan for nationwide mutual recognition of professional credentials. Ministers are also working on the mutual recognition of consumer goods, excluding food, so that if a product is approved for sale in one province, it can be sold anywhere in Canada without added red tape.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has signalled that his province won’t wait for consensus. Ontario is dropping all its CFTA exemptions, allowing medical professionals to begin practising while awaiting registration with provincial regulators.
Ontario has partnered with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to implement mutual recognition of goods, services and registered workers. These provinces have also enabled direct-to-consumer alcohol sales, letting individuals purchase alcohol directly from producers for personal consumption.
A joint CFTA statement says other provinces intend to follow suit, except Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.
These developments are long overdue. Confederation happened more than 150 years ago, and prohibition ended more than a century ago, yet Canadians still face barriers when trying to buy a bottle of wine from another province or find work across a provincial line.
Perhaps now, Canada will finally become the economic union it was always meant to be. Few would thank Donald Trump, but without his tariffs, this renewed urgency to break down internal trade barriers might never have emerged.
Lee Harding is a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
Alberta
Low oil prices could have big consequences for Alberta’s finances

From the Fraser Institute
By Tegan Hill
Amid the tariff war, the price of West Texas Intermediate oil—a common benchmark—recently dropped below US$60 per barrel. Given every $1 drop in oil prices is an estimated $750 million hit to provincial revenues, if oil prices remain low for long, there could be big implications for Alberta’s budget.
The Smith government already projects a $5.2 billion budget deficit in 2025/26 with continued deficits over the following two years. This year’s deficit is based on oil prices averaging US$68.00 per barrel. While the budget does include a $4 billion “contingency” for unforeseen events, given the economic and fiscal impact of Trump’s tariffs, it could quickly be eaten up.
Budget deficits come with costs for Albertans, who will already pay a projected $600 each in provincial government debt interest in 2025/26. That’s money that could have gone towards health care and education, or even tax relief.
Unfortunately, this is all part of the resource revenue rollercoaster that’s are all too familiar to Albertans.
Resource revenue (including oil and gas royalties) is inherently volatile. In the last 10 years alone, it has been as high as $25.2 billion in 2022/23 and as low as $2.8 billion in 2015/16. The provincial government typically enjoys budget surpluses—and increases government spending—when oil prices and resource revenue is relatively high, but is thrown into deficits when resource revenues inevitably fall.
Fortunately, the Smith government can mitigate this volatility.
The key is limiting the level of resource revenue included in the budget to a set stable amount. Any resource revenue above that stable amount is automatically saved in a rainy-day fund to be withdrawn to maintain that stable amount in the budget during years of relatively low resource revenue. The logic is simple: save during the good times so you can weather the storm during bad times.
Indeed, if the Smith government had created a rainy-day account in 2023, for example, it could have already built up a sizeable fund to help stabilize the budget when resource revenue declines. While the Smith government has deposited some money in the Heritage Fund in recent years, it has not created a dedicated rainy-day account or introduced a similar mechanism to help stabilize provincial finances.
Limiting the amount of resource revenue in the budget, particularly during times of relatively high resource revenue, also tempers demand for higher spending, which is only fiscally sustainable with permanently high resource revenues. In other words, if the government creates a rainy-day account, spending would become more closely align with stable ongoing levels of revenue.
And it’s not too late. To end the boom-bust cycle and finally help stabilize provincial finances, the Smith government should create a rainy-day account.
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