National
Trudeau drops nearly $200K on airplane food during six-day trip

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Author: Franco Terrazzano
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his entourage dropped $190,000 of taxpayer money on airplane food during a tour of the Indo-Pacific region last fall, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
The taxpayer tab was $1.9 million for the six-day trip.
“I guess one way to beat the high cost of groceries in Canada is to take a government work trip and bill taxpayers for fancy airplane food,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “For that price, the prime minister could have covered an average family’s grocery bill for almost two decades.”
From Sept. 5-10, 2023, Trudeau toured the Indo-Pacific region, meeting with business leaders in Singapore, the president of Indonesia, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and attending the G20 Summit in India.
The focus of the trip was “nurturing relationships with Asian leaders and advancing trade talks,” according to a report from the Canadian Press.
Costs for the trip included $427,000 for RCMP security, $643,000 for jet fuel and aircraft handling fees, $422,000 for hotels, $129,000 for ground transportation, and $190,000 for in-flight catering, according to government records obtained by the CTF.
The number of passengers on the government aircraft ranged from 37 to 54 at various legs of the trip. Additional costs included $22,000 for meals and incidentals (on top of the in-flight catering expenses) and $2,500 for gifts.
All told, the trip cost taxpayers $1,908,243. The tab could rise even higher, as the records indicate certain expenses are still being processed.
The $190,000 spent on in-flight catering surpasses the $100,000 Governor General Mary Simon spent on airplane food during her weeklong trip to the Middle East in March 2022.
In the aftermath of the in-flight catering costs for Simon’s trip becoming public, a Parliamentary committee summoned high-ranking government employees to answer for the outrageous tab, and later moved to curb future frivolous spending.
“We recognize that the system that we had in place was not delivering the kind of oversight and control that Canadian taxpayers deserve,” said Stewart Wheeler, who was then Canada’s chief of protocol.
“The government told taxpayers it would cut down on these extravagant trips, but dropping $200,000 on airplane food doesn’t exactly scream fiscal responsibility,” Terrazzano said. “The government is more than $1 trillion in debt, so maybe it could cool it on these expensive international trips.”
The CTF has filed access-to-information requests for the in-flight catering receipts for Trudeau’s September 2023 Indo-Pacific tour.
2025 Federal Election
Poilievre promises to drop ‘radical political ideologies’ in universities

From LifeSiteNews
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has pledged to prioritize funding scientific research over ‘radical political ideologies’ at Canadian universities.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has promised to scrap government funding of “radical political ideologies” in higher education if elected prime minister.
During an April 2 speech in Toronto, Poilievre told a French reporter that his Conservative government will focus on promoting scientific research rather than furthering radical ideologies in Canadian universities.
“The money we spend on research will go to research, not to promoting political ideologies,” Poilievre said. “We want, for example, our science and technology research to go into technological breakthroughs, inventions, innovations, discoveries, cures for terrible diseases that can improve Canadian lives.”
“That is what Canadians expect their tax dollars to go to, not to spend it on radical political ideologies that are first of all completely out of touch with the values of Canadians, and second of all, have no scientific value to our people,” Poilievre added.
This was the second time Poilievre denounced woke spending at universities, the first time being at a Quebec rally last week.
The policy proposal has seemed to draw the ire of some in academia, with Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) executive director David Robinson stating, “It’s worrying that a leader of a political party in Canada would try to dictate how research funds will be granted.”
“We’ve seen the impact of this political meddling south of the border where the Trump administration has launched a full-scale assault on universities and the scientific community,” he continued. “This kind of American-style culture war has no place in Canada.”
Under U.S. President Donald Trump, public schools and universities were given until the end of February to eliminate their DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs or risk losing federal funding.
More than 30 states have introduced legislation that would eliminate DEI programs from education as part of a broader push against woke ideology spearheaded by Republicans such as Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Conservatives have long criticized DEI and other forms of identity politics for stoking rather than curtailing division. Moreover, many take issue with left-wing ideologies, such as gender ideology, because they contain objective falsehoods such as the denial of biological reality in determining sex.
2025 Federal Election
Will Four More Years Of Liberals Prove The West’s Tipping Point?

The 1997 political comedy Wag The Dog featured a ruling president far behind in the polls engaging Hollywood to rescue his failing ratings. By inventing a fake war against Albania and a left-behind “hero”— nicknamed Shoe— the Hollywood producer creates a narrative that sweeps the nation.
The meme of hanging old shoes from the branches of trees and power lines catches on and re-elects the president. In a plot kicker, the vain producer is killed by the president’s handlers when he refuses to stay quiet about his handiwork. The movie’s cynicism over political spin made it a big hit in the Bill Clinton/ Monica Lewinsky days.

In the recent 2024 election the Democrats thought they’d resurrect the WTD formula to spin off senile Joe Biden at the last minute in favour of Kamala Harris. Americans saw through the obvious charade and installed Donald Trump instead.
You’d think that would be enough to dissuade Canadians who pride themselves on their hip, postmodern humour. But you’d be wrong, they don’t get the joke. Wag The Carney is the current political theatre as Liberals bury the reviled Justin Trudeau and pivot to Mark Carney. If you believe the polling it might just be working on a public besotted by ex-pat Mike Myers and “Canada’s Not For Sale”.
As opposed to Wag The Dog, few are laughing about this performative theatre, however. There are still two debates (English/ French) and over three more weeks of campaign where anything— hello Paul Chiang—can happen. But with Laurentian media bribed by the Libs— Carney is threatening those who stray— people are already projecting what another four years of Liberals in office will mean.
As the most prominent outlier to Team Canada’s “we will fight them on the beaches…” Alberta’s premier Danielle Smith is already steering a course for her province that doesn’t include going to war with America on energy. She asked Trump to delay his tariffs until Canadians had a chance to speak on the subject in an election April 28. Naturally the howler monkeys of the Left accused her of treason. She got her wish Wednesday when Canada was spared any new tariffs for the time being.

Clearly, she (and Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe) have no illusions about Carney not using their energy industry as a whipping post for his EU climate schemes. They’ve seen the cynical flip in polls as former Trudeau loyalists hurry back to the same Liberal party they abandoned in 2024. They know Carney can manipulate the Boomer demographic just as he did when he called for draconian financial methods against the peaceful Truckers Convoy in 2022.
Former Reform leader Preston Manning is unequivocal: “’Large numbers of Westerners simply will not stand for another four years of Liberal government, no matter who leads it.’“ So how does the West respond within Confederation to protect itself from a predatory Ottawa elite?
Clearly, the emissions cap— part of Carney’s radical environmental plans— will keep Alberta’s treasure in the ground. With Carney repeating no cancellation of Bill C-69 that precludes building pipelines in the future, the momentum for a referendum in Alberta will only grow. The NDP will howl, but there will be enough push among from the rest of Albertans for a new approach within Canada.
In this vein Smith even wants to approach Quebec. While it seems like odd bedfellows the two provinces most at odds with the status quo have much in common . “This is an area where our two provinces may be able to coordinate an approach,” Smith wrote this week. That could include referendums by the middle of 2026.
Perhaps the best recipe for keeping the increasingly fractious union together is a devolution of power, not unlike that governing the United Kingdom. While Westminster remains the central power since 1997, there are now separate parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that put power closer to the citizen, so that local factors are better recognized in decision making.
With so little uniting the regions of the country any longer, devolution might provide a solution. What form could decentralization take within Canada? A Western Canada Parliament could blunt predatory federal energy policies while countering the imbalances of Canada’s equalization process. Similar parliaments representing Quebec, the Atlantic provinces, Ontario and B.C. would protect their own special interests within Canada. Ottawa could handle Canada’s international obligations to defence, trade and international cooperation.
While the idea is fraught with pitfalls it nonetheless remains preferable to a breakup of the nation, which four more years of Liberals rule under Mark Carney and the same Trudeau characters will likely precipitate. Smith’s outreach case would be the beginning of such a process.
None of this would be necessary were the populations of Eastern Canada and B.C.’s lower mainland remotely serious after snoozing through the Trudeau decade. The OECD shows Canada’s 1.4% GDP barely ahead of Luxembourg and behind the rest of the industrialized world from 2015-2025. As we’ve said before the Boomers sitting on their $1 million-plus homes are re-staging Woodstock on the Canada Pension and OAS. As with Wag The Dog, they’re not getting the joke.

When the Boomers award themselves another four years of taxapalooza and Mike Myers and the other “Canada Not For For Sale” celebs head south to their tax-avoidance schemes how will the Boomers say they’ve left Canada better off for anyone under 60? We’ll hang up and listen to your answer on the TV.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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