Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was on the defensive on Tuesday over costs associated with, and the location of, his family's Christmas vacation in Jamaica, with opposition party leaders questioning his judgment and demanding more information about the trip.
While the Prime Minister's Office announced at the time that Trudeau would be taking the weeklong winter holiday, Trudeau's office didn't release where he'd be staying. On Tuesday, Radio-Canada reported that the trip was spent at "a luxurious estate" belonging to a family who two years ago donated to the recently-troubled Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.
"This prime minister wants us to believe that these Trudeau Foundation donors offered him a $9,000-a-night vacation for nothing. We know nothing is free Mr. Speaker. This is about influence and power for the super rich. So why won't he answer? How much did he pay in accommodation per night at this luxurious villa?" asked Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in the House of Commons.
In response, Trudeau noted that "all the rules were followed" as the trip was pre-cleared with the federal ethics commissioner, stating that the place he stayed belonged to a family that his family has been close with for 50 years.
"The Leader of the Opposition struggles with the concept of friendship… My father was godfather to one of their kids, their father was godfather to one of my brothers," Trudeau said. "If the leader of the Opposition wants to talk about friendships, let's talk about the fact that he's running to his American billionaire tech giants friends to attack the local news that Canadians are relying on."
This was a reference to his endorsement of Twitter's Elon Musk slapping a "government funded media" label on the CBC/Radio Canada's main account just a day before Poilievre repeatedly relied on the organization's reporting to challenge the Liberals in the House.
According to documents tabled in the House of Commons detailing the expenses related to Trudeau, the trip came with an approximate price tag of $162,000. As confirmed by CTV News, the largest cost was for the prime minister's security detail, a requirement any time he travels.
It cost the RCMP more than $115,500 to protect the prime minister and his family 24/7 during this trip, per the force's mandate. The vast majority of this was spent on travel, including accommodations, meals and incidentals.
It is also longstanding government policy that the prime minister travel on government aircraft, whether on official or personal business.
And, while Trudeau did reimburse the equivalent cost of the flights on commercial airfare for himself and his guests, it cost the Royal Canadian Air Force $33,600 to put up and pay for the per diems of the four-person flight crew who flew the Challenger aircraft.
Another $13,500 was spent by the Privy Council Office to "support" Trudeau while he was on vacation, including paying for a staffer to set up secure communications on-site, and other accommodations.
Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet said he wasn't questioning the prime minister's right to go on vacation with his family, but did question the "opulence" of it, the timing, and the ethics of this trip.
"I understand the fact that moving this specific guy comes with a lot of expenses, and he doesn't have a choice. But… while so many Quebecers and Canadians are facing questions about their capacity to pay the mortgage in a few months… There's a lack of consideration and respect for the average citizen in that behaviour," Blanchet told reporters on Parliament Hill on Tuesday morning.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh echoed these questions about Trudeau's judgment about taking this holiday at a time when many Canadians are struggling, in his own press conference.
"I'm not actually touching the ethics concerns here," said Singh. "I think that what this vacation shows is just another example of a prime minister that doesn't understand the realities of everyday Canadians. Hasn't lived those struggles."
Trudeau on Tuesday also sought to once again distance himself from any connections to the Trudeau Foundation, which is facing heavy scrutiny and calls for layers of auditing over a donation with a potential link to the Chinese government.
The prime minister's emphasis on working with the ethics commissioner before taking off comes after Trudeau found himself on the wrong side of federal conflict of interest rules over his Christmas 2016 trip with family and friends to the Aga Khan's private Bahamian island. At the time, the PM vowed to behave "differently" in the future.
In the ethics commissioner role at the time Trudeau would have been planning for this Jamaican getaway was Mario Dion, who retired in February. On Tuesday, he weighed in on the story to say that while "gifts from a friend are acceptable from a legal ethical point of view," sometimes public opinion "uses a different test and that is healthy," he tweeted.
Coming to the prime minister's defence as the queries kept coming during question period, Government House Leader Mark Holland questioned whether the opposition's personal views about Trudeau were clouding their views about this situation given the ethics commissioner's sign-off and reimbursement.
Holland asked in response to a question from his Conservative counterpart Andrew Scheer, if the one-time prime ministerial hopeful thought future prime ministers should be able to take vacations while in office, and do so with protection.
"And if he does believe that— which is the vast preponderance of these costs—then certainly he would see that the actions taken were reasonable," Holland said.
According to the federal government, Canada has "strong bilateral relations" with Jamaica, seeing millions in trade exchanged, and thousands of Canadians visiting the Caribbean island every year.
Though, Canada's current travel advisory for Jamaica urges Canadians to exercise a "high degree of caution" due to the high level of violent crime in the country, and cautions LGBTQ2S+ travellers about the risk of harassment and abuse.
