Prime Minister Justin Trudeau swaggers about, throwing taxpayers’ money to his friends. For example:

  • Trudeau’s former chief of staff, Gerald Butts, a close friend since university, who resigned his position in the PMO over the SNC-Lavalin scandal, had previously been the CEO of the environmental lobby group, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which opposes the oil and gas industry. Justin Trudeau’s government gave WWF $4 million between 2016 and 2020.
    Butts was also an adviser to former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and his Green Energy Act, which led to a 70% increase in electricity rates for Ontario residents. After his resignation from the PMO, Butts returned to Trudeau’s inner circle in late July 2019 as part of Trudeau’s 2019 election campaign team. Butts was next appointed, in May 2020, as head of a Liberal taskforce called “Taskforce for Resilient Recovery” to recommend post-pandemic policies to reset the agenda on green energy and climate change. The taskforce issued its report in August 2020, calling upon the federal government to spend $55 billion over five years on clean energy, as well as measures to deal with climate change. The taskforce came up with “five bold moves” for a “green recovery”. The word “bold” is misleading as the taskforce’s recommendations could more accurately be described as “wasteful” and “futile”.
  • In August 2020, Rob Silver, the husband of Trudeau’s current chief of staff, Katie Telford, lobbied for a change in the COVID wage subsidy that would have benefited his company. He was, at that time, not a registered lobbyist – which posed serious ethical questions as to whether he was using his connections through his wife to lobby government officials. Silver followed this up by lobbying for a new company he had established, which was awarded an $80 million contract in 2020 to manage a Liberal government program to aid small businesses.
  • Trudeau’s half-brother, Kyle Kemper, the son of his mother, Margaret Trudeau and her second husband, Fried Kemper, was given a $12,430 contract in June 2019 by Global Affairs Canada to give a speech in Switzerland.
  • In 2020, a contract was awarded to a Montreal firm, founded and operated by former Montreal Liberal MP, Frank Baylis, a long-time Liberal organizer and personal friend of Trudeau. This non-competitive contract, worth $237 million, was granted to produce 10,000 medical ventilators for COVID-19 patients. An identical ventilator, produced by a Mississauga, Ontario firm, was sold around the world for half the price paid by the federal government for the ventilators produced by Mr. Baylis.
  • Trudeau appointed 19 federal public servants to work part-time to advise former Finance Minister Bill Morneau, who resigned in August 2020 from his seat as a Toronto MP. These public servants aided his efforts to become Secretary General of the elite, Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This position has the attraction of coming with an astronomical expense account. So far, Global Affairs Canada has given Mr. Morneau $6265.76 to spend on hospitality in Paris to lobby for the position. Global Affairs said it had no projections as to the final price tag for this undertaking, including the cost of the work done by the 19 public servants on Mr. Morneau’s behalf.
  • Trudeau, as our leader, believes in treating himself well. His government spent $10,000 to fly him, during the pandemic, to Toronto and back in two hours for a photo-op at a school in connection with the closing of schools during the pandemic. Trudeau also spent tens of thousands of dollars, in the first two months of 2018, on luxury food items while flying aboard the government jet. This includes $2000 seafood platters, $285 for Belgian waffles and $412 for hot towels.
    Trudeau has authorized a $9 million renovation upgrade at his Harrington Lake Quebec retreat, used exclusively by himself and his family. He spent $28,629 at the retreat on electricity charges in the six-month period between October 2019 and March 2020, and the charges for four of the months were in excess of $5000. During the same time frame the cost of furnace oil exceeded $18,000.
  • Trudeau’s unsuccessful attempt to obtain, for purposes of his own personal vanity and glory, an utterly useless seat on the UN Security Council has cost the taxpayer nearly $330,000. This was used to wine and dine the world’s dictators and oligarchs to try to convince them to vote for Canada on the Security Council.

Trudeau’s Problem

The problem with Trudeau seems to be that he doesn’t regard himself as just a prime minister, but rather, as an enlightened, progressive leader of both this country and the world. This allows him to ignore ethical, moral, and financial standards and to be completely unaccountable for lavish spending sprees on himself and his friends.