Taxpayers covered the $1.5 million cost to send 400 individuals to participate in a two-week United Nations summit in Montreal last December.This information was obtained from government records made available in response to a request for information from Conservative MP Eric Melillo (Kenora, ON). Additional details were confirmed by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).From December 7 to December 19, 2022, Canada sent a 400-person delegation to the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, also known as COP15, and spent $1.5 million on hotel rooms for the event.“Did the feds really need to send 400 people to Montreal for a conference?” said Franco Terrazzano, federal director of CTF Federal Director. “Canadians pay an obscene amount of money when our politicians and bureaucrats travel abroad, and now we learn we also pay an arm and a leg when we host a conference at home.”Environment and Climate Change Canada acknowledged that the overall spending on hotel rooms exceeded $1.5 million. They stated they do not have the resources to calculate the total spending.“There were also other costs for hotel rooms that were booked directly by travellers and reimbursed by ECCC,” the agency wrote. “It would require a significant amount of time and effort to locate and analyze the supporting documentation of each travel request and manually extract the requested information.”The accommodations were reserved at two downtown hotels, Le Westin Montreal and the Intercontinental Montreal, with a total cost of $1,539,052 paid for taxpayers.“It seems like all you have to do to get a taxpayer-funded hotel room is show up,” said Terrazzano. “At a time when so many taxpayers are struggling to make ends meet, it’s outrageous the government is spending so much money at a conference in our own backyard.”This is not the first time that extravagant spending by Canadian politicians and government officials at a United Nations climate conference has drawn criticism.In 2021, Canada sent the largest group of representatives among all the G7 nations to the COP26 Conference on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland.Taxpayer funds amounting to at least $1 million were spent on the trip, although the government did not disclose all the spending.Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and three support staff reserved hotel accommodations in Edinburgh, which was 86 kilometres away from the conference.Consequently, they charged taxpayers thousands of dollars to hire a luxury chauffeur service for transportation between the two cities.“It’s clear politicians and bureaucrats love spending other people’s money going to conferences in fun cities, but what value are taxpayers getting from all this spending?” said Terrazzano. “The feds are more than $1 trillion in debt and Canadians can’t afford higher taxes, so reining in their conference budgets should be a no-brainer.”
Taxpayers covered the $1.5 million cost to send 400 individuals to participate in a two-week United Nations summit in Montreal last December.This information was obtained from government records made available in response to a request for information from Conservative MP Eric Melillo (Kenora, ON). Additional details were confirmed by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).From December 7 to December 19, 2022, Canada sent a 400-person delegation to the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, also known as COP15, and spent $1.5 million on hotel rooms for the event.“Did the feds really need to send 400 people to Montreal for a conference?” said Franco Terrazzano, federal director of CTF Federal Director. “Canadians pay an obscene amount of money when our politicians and bureaucrats travel abroad, and now we learn we also pay an arm and a leg when we host a conference at home.”Environment and Climate Change Canada acknowledged that the overall spending on hotel rooms exceeded $1.5 million. They stated they do not have the resources to calculate the total spending.“There were also other costs for hotel rooms that were booked directly by travellers and reimbursed by ECCC,” the agency wrote. “It would require a significant amount of time and effort to locate and analyze the supporting documentation of each travel request and manually extract the requested information.”The accommodations were reserved at two downtown hotels, Le Westin Montreal and the Intercontinental Montreal, with a total cost of $1,539,052 paid for taxpayers.“It seems like all you have to do to get a taxpayer-funded hotel room is show up,” said Terrazzano. “At a time when so many taxpayers are struggling to make ends meet, it’s outrageous the government is spending so much money at a conference in our own backyard.”This is not the first time that extravagant spending by Canadian politicians and government officials at a United Nations climate conference has drawn criticism.In 2021, Canada sent the largest group of representatives among all the G7 nations to the COP26 Conference on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland.Taxpayer funds amounting to at least $1 million were spent on the trip, although the government did not disclose all the spending.Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and three support staff reserved hotel accommodations in Edinburgh, which was 86 kilometres away from the conference.Consequently, they charged taxpayers thousands of dollars to hire a luxury chauffeur service for transportation between the two cities.“It’s clear politicians and bureaucrats love spending other people’s money going to conferences in fun cities, but what value are taxpayers getting from all this spending?” said Terrazzano. “The feds are more than $1 trillion in debt and Canadians can’t afford higher taxes, so reining in their conference budgets should be a no-brainer.”
