OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) — Canadian taxpayers paid a hefty price to feed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his entourage during his nearly $1 million trip to Europe in June.
According to numbers obtained by the Canadian Taxpayer Federation (CFT), the food bill for Trudeau’s four-day trip to Italy and Switzerland cost taxpayers over $71,000, including $43,000 for airplane food alone.
“It would have been cheaper for each member of the prime minister’s delegation to go to the Keg, order a prime rib steak, a Caesar salad, baked garlic shrimp and a bottle of pinot noir for every meal,” CFT director Franco Terrazzano said.
According to the cost breakdown, the average meal cost $145 for a total of over $1,700 per member of Trudeau’s delegation. The food cost included $812 for junk food from a grocery store before takeoff.
“The per-person food bill for Trudeau and his entourage on this trip was more than the average Canadian family spends on groceries in a month,” Terrazzano revealed.
According to Canada’s Food Price Report, the average Canadian family of four spends about $1,400 on food per month.
During the June trip, Trudeau traveled with an entourage of 36-41 people. The trip included stops in Apulia, Italy, and Lucerne, Switzerland to attend a G7 Summit and a Summit on Peace in Ukraine.
According to records from the Department of National Defence and the Privy Council Office, the total cost of the trip was $918,000. However, the departments noted that the actual cost could be higher as “some accommodations were covered by Global Affairs Canada.”
This is hardly the first time Trudeau has left Canadians with a hefty bill after a lavish trip overseas.
In May, the Trudeau government spent nearly $3 million in taxpayer funds to participate in the United Nations’ COP28 summit, including payment to the son of a Liberal MP to perform a song on “climate disinformation.”
Additionally, as LifeSiteNews previously reported, Trudeau billed taxpayers just under $500,000 for his Liberal cabinet to go on an “affordability” retreat last summer.
“Spending more than four hundred grand on a three-day retreat to tackle affordability is tone-deaf and unacceptable,” Terrazzano said at the time.
Trudeau’s apparent reckless spending comes as many Canadians struggle to pay for necessities such as food, rent, and heating, thanks in part to the ongoing carbon tax.
A 2023 report by Statistics Canada revealed that food prices are rising faster than the headline inflation rate – the overall inflation rate in the country – as staple food items are increasing at a rate of 10 percent to 18 percent year over year.