OTTAWA — It was perhaps one of the most hotly-anticipated vacations of 2024.
After a challenging week of high-profile resignations, challenges to his leadership and opposition parties threatening to topple his minority government at the first opportunity, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau departed Ottawa for his annual winter vacation Thursday morning, almost certainly headed for a ski vacation in B.C.
The RCAF Challenger jet, bearing the callsign CANFORCE ONE, departed Ottawa just after 9:15 a.m. on Boxing Day, headed due west.
Despite persistent and unsubstantiated rumours that the PM and his estranged wife took over several floors of a ski resort in the west Kootenay town of Rossland, the PM’s plane landed at around 2 p.m. eastern time in Kelowna.
While many world leaders fly commercially for vacations, Canadian prime ministers are bound by long-standing policy to use government aircraft for all travel, with the PM and his family customarily reimbursing the government equivalent costs of commercial airfare, despite the costs for these trips often going well into six figures.
Inquires by the Toronto Sun to the PMO for information about the PM’s vacation were ignored.
This will be the second time this year the PM headed to the B.C. mountains for vacation, having spent a summer vacation in Whistler in late July.
For the past two Christmases, Trudeau vacationed at the ultra-luxurious Prospect Estate near Ocho Rios, Jamaica — vacations the PMO insists were cleared by Canada’s ethics commissioner.
Despite staying at the resort, owned by longtime family friend Peter Green, for free, that trip still cost taxpayers $230,442 in travel, personnel and security costs.
No information is available about who accompanied the PM on his latest trip.
Trudeau’s time in office has been fraught with numerous vacation nightmares.
The PM’s first Christmas vacation in office earned him convictions under the Conflict of Interest Act after the Aga Khan hosted Trudeau at his private island in the Bahamas in 2016.
The Aga Khan Foundation received $50 million in funding from the Liberal government that year.
The Trudeau family’s cringe-worthy 2019 family vacation to India made headlines worldwide, as the PM and his family seemingly came equipped with several costumes that caused a sensation in the Indian press.
The Toronto Sun was the the first to report the PM’s secret Sept. 30, 2021 surfing holiday in Tofino — a trip that began on Canada’s first Truth and Reconciliation Day.
First Nations groups reacted with anger over that trip – which wasn’t acknowledged by the PM until after the news broke – claiming the PMO ignored numerous invitations to mark the day in their communities in favour of the vacation.
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