This morning I posted on these pages that the Premier’s tab for the London Olympic junket was $18,032 - a fair sum for a trip many found of questionable value.
Upon further inspection of her receipts however, it seems I made two little errors.
Now it’s always better to lowball things than over blow them, but a mistake is a mistake.
1: I added up her car service in Canadian dollars, when in fact they were in British Pounds. That moves her car service up from $2,275 to $3,640. That’s a lot for a glorified taxi.
2: The Premier’s hotel bill was so heavily censored that the single night rate was confused with the total. This brings her hotel bill from $1,860 to whopping $6,880.
In total, the tab for the Premier’s London trip to $23,075.
Item | Dollars | Page | Notes |
Flight | $12,555.51 | 12 | Air Canada, Calgary to London, Paris to Calgary |
Hotel | $6,880.00 | 13 | Le Meridien Piccadily, London |
Car Service | $3,640.00 | 14 to 19 | John Alan's Car Service |
Total | $23,075.51 |
| No food or incidentals listed |
I couldn’t spend $12,555 on a single flight if I tried, or $6,880 on hotels, or $3,640 for a car to tour me around.
Should the Premier have taken the Olympic junket or not? That’s a fair debate. I don’t think many people go to the Olympics to meet provincial politicians from the other side of planet, but than again I wasn’t invited on the trip
What is clearer is that this expedition was a financial fiasco from start to finish. They blew the budget from the initial $84,000 to over $500,000.
They booked a swath of hotel rooms and when they sat empty, they told us that they were saving us money because those people weren’t eating.
And now after wrangling to get the details, we know that the Premier wracked up $23,000 personally.
Support the London expedition or not, you can’t look taxpayers in the face and tell them it was a good deal.
We can all agree on one things though, this is in the running for a Teddy nomination.
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