(Ottawa) A Radio-Canada report that shone the spotlight on Justin Trudeau’s new luxury vacation provided ammunition for Pierre Poilievre – the same one who had in the previous hours taxed the media as a propaganda arm of the prime minister.
After a trip to Aga Khan Island that earned him ethical reprimand, a surfing trip to Tofino for which he apologized, as it coincided with the first Truth and Reconciliation Day , the Prime Minister is still in troubled waters.
This time, it is those of Jamaica. The Trudeau clan celebrated the New Year on the island, at an estate owned by members of the Green family, where the cost of a night in a villa fluctuates between US$1,100 and US$7,000 during the holiday season.
The Independent Agent of Parliament was consulted ahead of the trip, which cost taxpayers a whopping $162,000, largely ($115,000) for security-related expenses for the Prime Minister and his family, such as as reported by Radio-Canada.
The equivalent of plane tickets for Justin Trudeau – who cannot travel on commercial aircraft – and his family have been reimbursed, his office said. What about villa nights? Did the prime minister pay for them out of pocket?
The opposition parties tried, in vain, to extract this information from the House of Commons, where a flood of questions awaited Justin Trudeau on Tuesday, after a break of just over two weeks of parliamentary work.
Because in addition to being well-off, the Green family contributes to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, an element which has provided a golden opportunity for opponents of the Liberals to return to the recent torments of the charitable organization.
Neither he nor his MPs uttered the words CBC or Radio-Canada during the session, two days after Twitter CEO Elon Musk decided to label the public broadcaster as 69% funded media. , according to its latest assessment – ​​by Ottawa.
But Justin Trudeau, he returned to the episode, under the theme of the super rich: “If the Leader of the Opposition wants to talk about friendships, let’s talk about the fact that he runs to his American friends giant tech billionaires to attack the local news that Canadians rely on. Shame on him.”
In the Bloc camp, MP René Villemure referred to the report by the Crown corporation, “the propaganda organ according to the Conservative Party”, he quipped, in a question nevertheless addressed to Justin Trudeau.
“It was at [the Greens] that the Prime Minister chose to go on vacation. How can the Prime Minister continue to pretend he has no connection to the Trudeau Foundation? “, asserted the ethicist by training.
It is not impossible that no costs were incurred for the accommodation of the Trudeau family, a government source told La Presse. The Trudeaus and the Greens are very close – Pierre Elliott Trudeau was the godfather of Alexander Green, born in 1980.
In 2021, Alexander and Andrew Green created the Mary-Jean Mitchell Green Scholarship within the Trudeau Foundation in memory of their mother. The value of the donation that made it possible was not disclosed by the organization.
“As I have said many times, it has been 10 years since I have had any direct or indirect involvement with the foundation that bears my father’s name,” Justin Trudeau reiterated in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
The catch is that it’s hard to separate the two, says Daniel Béland, full professor of political science at McGill University: “It’s true right now, but it’s impossible to say, historically, that ‘there are no ties’.
Basically, “it’s not really important anymore what the details are, even if we’re going to look at that”, because since the Aga Khan and Tofino, Justin Trudeau’s ethical compass has become “a matter of perception”, believes the political scientist.
In 2017, the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner found that the Prime Minister had contravened the Conflict of Interest Act by visiting Aga Khan Island, the foundation of the latter with links to the government.
