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Harper government spends millions on flying VIPs on Challenger jets
Federal cabinet minister Joe Oliver and three officials spent approximately $52,000 to take a taxpayer-funded government VIP Challenger jet to Paris for less than t…
Details of the taxpayer-funded trips on the Challenger jets are found in documents recently tabled in the House of Commons. The documents also show Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Gov. Gen. David Johnston have spent close to $4 million combined, travelling on the jets more than 100 times each during the last three years.
Harper took a Challenger jet on 113 trips between April 2011 and February 2014, at a cost of approximately $1.8 million, according to the flight manifests. There’s no breakdown of where he travelled, although most of the trips would have been in Canada.
(Millions of dollars more are spent each year on Harper’s foreign travel for state visits and international summits. For those trips, he flies aboard the larger military Airbus CC-150 Polaris).
The Governor General took 109 trips aboard a Challenger jet between April 2011 and February 2014, at a cost of $2 million.
The Royal Canadian Air Force’s VIP Challenger jets seat nine passengers and cost more than $3,300 an hour to operate. They are used to shuttle around the Governor General, prime minister, cabinet ministers and other dignitaries. The RCMP has determined that, for security reasons, the prime minister and Governor General should not fly on commercial aircraft.
