| While we are being told to cut down on carbon emissions and being taxed to death, our leader decides it’s OK to spendover $200k for one trip for in flight meals. This is an excerpt from the First Reading Newsletter. TOP STORY This week, a House of Commons disclosure revealed that a six-day prime ministerial visit to Asia last year somehow managed to incur $223,234 in in-flight catering costs. There were a maximum of 72 passengers aboard the jet during the trip, although that dropped as low as 37 on certain legs. As to who they were, it included Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his son Xavier, various cabinet ministers, and the prime minister’s usual entourage of advisers, PR flacks, videographers and photographers. If we assume that the $223,234 was shared equally among the 72, that comes to $3,100 per person. Or, $516 per person, per day. And again; that’s only the in-flight food. The trip included visits to the ASEAN Summit in Indonesia, the G20 summit in India and a side trip to Singapore; anything the Canadian delegation ate at those places was billed to a separate tab. To get a sense of just how much food $223,234 could buy under different circumstances, we’ve compiled a few comparisons below. It’s 10,630 glasses of $16 orange juice The most iconic food-based spending scandal during the premiership of Stephen Harper was the time in 2012 when his minister of international co-operation billed taxpayers for a $16 room service orange juice. With inflation, that $16 orange juice would now cost about $21. So, $223,234 would buy 10,630 glasses of it. Assuming it’s an eight-ounce glass of orange juice, that’s the equivalent of 2,500 litres. Or, enough Bev Oda orange juice to fill eight clawfoot bathtubs. It’s 11,045 of the most expensive Subway sandwich possible In Canada, one of the places most impacted by rising inflation has been the fast food sphere. Only a few years ago it was still possible to get a $5 footlong at a Canadian Subway. Now, there’s no footlong cheaper than $10, and the priciest sandwich (the Stampede Brisket) tops out at an eye-watering $17.81, not including tax, drink or cookie. Still, if the Trudeau party had spent their catering budget entirely on Stampede Briskets, with HST they would have been able to buy 11,045 of them. For a party of 72 eating three Stampede Brisket footlongs per day, that would cover them for 51 days. It’s 217 servings of the most expensive restaurant meal in Toronto If you went out for dinner in Toronto with the singular goal of spending as much money as possible, you would probably end up at Jacob’s Steakhouse. It’s one of the only restaurants in Canada offering authentic Kobe beef from Japan, and a 14-ounce A5 Kobe ribeye flown in direct from Hyogo Prefecture will cost you $910 ($1,028.30 with HST). Given the limited number of in-flight meals actually consumed by Trudeau’s party during the six-day trip, it’s entirely likely that the catering bill wouldn’t have been all that different if the trip had simply brought a couple coolers filled with boxed-up Jacob’s Steakhouse Kobe ribeyes. It’s 12,401 units of Canadian Armed Forces rations The prime minister does all his travelling in military jets. The CC-150 Polaris that was used to take him and his entourage to Asia is part of the RCAF fleet, and shares pilots and maintenance staff with the likes of the CC-130 Hercules cargo aircraft or the CC-177 Globemaster strategic airlifter. If the Canadian Armed Forces were flying 72 service members overseas, they would probably feed them IMPs; a boxed ready-to-eat field ration. They’re also really tasty; as military field rations go, the Canadian IMP is considered one of the best in the world. According to a 2004 feature in Legion Magazine, an IMP costs about $11.50 — about $18 in 2024 prices. In a scenario where the Trudeau delegation had slummed it with IMPs (and had taken all three of their daily meals in-flight for the entire trip), the catering costs for the trip would have topped out at $23,328. It’s nearly half a million food bank meals News of the $223,234 catering tab dropped the exact same week that Food Banks Canada released a report estimating that as many as 25 per cent of Canadians could be living in what the organization characterizes as a “poverty-level” standard of living. This adds to a suite of figures showing that Canadian food bank visits are currently reaching all-time highs. Food bank networks such as Feed Ontario generally work to a standard of providing two meals for every $1 donated. So, $223,234 in the hands of a food bank could conceivably secure 446,000 meal equivalents. If a group of 72 Canadians were to live off food bank meals at 50 cents a unit, $223,234 would keep them fed for 5.6 years. Or, the equivalent of 344 six-day trips. It’s in league with the famously expensive Stanley Cup bar tab racked up by the Boston Bruins In the annals of professional sports excess, one of the most famous is a night in 2011 when the Boston Bruins managed to rack up a US$156,000 bar tab. The Bruins had just beaten the Vancouver Canucks in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, and they celebrated by going to the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut. By night’s end, the tab came to $156,679.74 – most of that due to a 30-litre bottle of Midas champagne costing $100,000. With inflation and exchange rate, the bar tab is the equivalent of $281,000 – about 25 per cent higher than the Trudeau in-flight catering tab. Still, if you take two dozen victory-flushed NHL players and put them in a Connecticut casino with instructions to drink as much premium liquor as they possibly can, it’s not going to cost you much more than the apparent six-day price of having snacks and in-flight meals available for Justin Trudeau’s entourage.? |
