Chris Selley
Friday, Jan. 6, 2017
Friday, Jan. 6, 2017
Had the PMO just confirmed Justin Trudeau and his
family were vacationing in the Bahamas that would have been the end of
it, writes Chris Selley. Handout
Earlier
this week, I argued the initial refusal of the Prime Minister’s Office
to divulge the location of Justin Trudeau’s vacation, in even the most
general terms, was cause for concern — even more so once it turned out
the answer was so apparently anodyne: Trudeau and family had flown to
the Bahamas, the PMO explained, and were holidaying somewhere in the
area. In my view, that was all that needed to be said at the time. That
the PMO would be so hesitant to release such harmless information
augured poorly, I argued, for how it would deal with things it really
didn’t want Canadians to know.
A steady torrent of objections began filling my inbox. Are
politicians not entitled to private lives? “Get a life!” I was
admonished at least twice. “If we continue to belittle government and
treat them with suspicion they will likely return the compliment,” one
very polite correspondent suggested. Even some people clearly
unenamoured of the PM — including one who referred to him as “Turdo” —
suggested I was being quite ridiculous. “Your write-up is useless!” he
complained.
A year earlier, the PMO had refused to divulge that the Trudeaus were in St. Kitts, until TMZ tracked them down. I suspected the same thing was happening again: they were enjoying a fairly conventional vacation, by the standards of people with significant means, and for some reason the PMO just didn’t want anyone to know about it. But then a little birdie alighted on my shoulder with some solid intel: the Trudeaus had been guests of the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the Ismailis, on his lavish private island, Bells Cay.
The PMO initially refused to confirm this to my colleague David Akin, but eventually came clean. “As you are aware, his Highness and the prime minister have been close family friends for many years,” Kate Purchase wrote in a statement Friday. “As is the usual course, the prime minister will be reimbursing the costs of his (and his family’s) flights to and from Nassau.”
Why, I was repeatedly asked, would journalists bother demanding to know where the PM is on vacation? This. This is why. If journalists hadn’t asked, we might never have known something that is — at the very least — unambiguously in the public interest. Since 2004, as Akin reported, federal taxpayers have handed the Aga Khan Foundation $310 million in foreign aid, including the current government’s recent commitment of $55 million over five years for aid work in Afghanistan.
By all accounts the Aga Khan is a fine fellow and his foundation does
wonderful work. And he is, as Purchase said, a close friend of the
Trudeau family. But there is a reason his foundation is formally
registered as an organization that lobbies the federal government: it’s
competing for Canadian taxpayers’ money with which to do those good
works, and that competition is supposed to be reasonably transparent.
And it seems the Aga Khan just gave the Prime Minister of Canada and
some of his friends and family a free vacation in paradise — one even
the Trudeaus might struggle to afford on their own. Many will quite
understandably perceive that as a conflict of interest. And there is no
indication Canadians ever would have known about it had Trudeau and his
office been left to determine the appropriate level of disclosure.
Indeed, had the PMO just said right off the bat that the family was in the Bahamas, media inquiries might have been rather less intense. Instead it defaulted to secrecy, piquing journalists’ interest all the more, and now we know they were concealing something that mattered. “Demanding to know what the government is doing, like demanding to know what it’s spending, can never be a piecemeal undertaking,” I argued in my original column. You can’t let it off the hook when things seem to “not matter.”
Again, people asked: Why? Again: This. This is why.
• Email: cselley@nationalpost.com | Twitter: cselley
A year earlier, the PMO had refused to divulge that the Trudeaus were in St. Kitts, until TMZ tracked them down. I suspected the same thing was happening again: they were enjoying a fairly conventional vacation, by the standards of people with significant means, and for some reason the PMO just didn’t want anyone to know about it. But then a little birdie alighted on my shoulder with some solid intel: the Trudeaus had been guests of the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the Ismailis, on his lavish private island, Bells Cay.
The PMO initially refused to confirm this to my colleague David Akin, but eventually came clean. “As you are aware, his Highness and the prime minister have been close family friends for many years,” Kate Purchase wrote in a statement Friday. “As is the usual course, the prime minister will be reimbursing the costs of his (and his family’s) flights to and from Nassau.”
Why, I was repeatedly asked, would journalists bother demanding to know where the PM is on vacation? This. This is why. If journalists hadn’t asked, we might never have known something that is — at the very least — unambiguously in the public interest. Since 2004, as Akin reported, federal taxpayers have handed the Aga Khan Foundation $310 million in foreign aid, including the current government’s recent commitment of $55 million over five years for aid work in Afghanistan.
HandoutPrime Minister Trudeau meets with the Aga Khan in his Centre Block office in Ottawa. May 17, 2016.
Indeed, had the PMO just said right off the bat that the family was in the Bahamas, media inquiries might have been rather less intense. Instead it defaulted to secrecy, piquing journalists’ interest all the more, and now we know they were concealing something that mattered. “Demanding to know what the government is doing, like demanding to know what it’s spending, can never be a piecemeal undertaking,” I argued in my original column. You can’t let it off the hook when things seem to “not matter.”
Again, people asked: Why? Again: This. This is why.
• Email: cselley@nationalpost.com | Twitter: cselley
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