The government department paid for accommodations, car rentals and “hospitality” costs for the three-day visit in March 2013, during which John Howard addressed the Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa.
The costs amounted to $8,206.29. More than $5,000 was spent on three nights’ worth of accommodation alone. John Babcock, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada, told Embassy the money came out of the Government Hospitality Allotment.
That’s a fund used for “bilateral visits to Canada by heads of state and foreign dignitaries who have been officially invited by the Governor General, the Prime Minister or [GAC] portfolio ministers,” according to a September 2011 document posted on the foreign department’s website. The costs don’t include any money the government may have spent on security.
Mr. Babcock confirmed that part of the reason for the visit was to speak at the conference. “The former prime minister came to Ottawa to speak at the Manning [Networking] Conference,” he wrote in an emailed response. He “also held meetings with the government.”
Mr. Howard served as Australian prime minister from 1996 until 2007. He left politics after losing his parliamentary seat in the 2007 Australian election and soon began to take international speaking engagements.
“You have no reason to be concerned about the state of conservatism in this country,” Mr. Howard said at the conference, according to media reports. “I can’t find a better conservative leader anywhere in the world than Stephen Harper.”
Dave Quist, vice president of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, wrote to Embassy in an emailed reply that speaker fees and logistical requirements for the conference are "private and confidential."
Gaddafi’s son came to Canada in 2010 for ‘private visit’
A spreadsheet obtained through access to information law shows Canada’s foreign department spent $10.6 million between 2006 and 2014 on foreign visits, all of them under Mr. Harper’s government.
Another unusual visit was by Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of dead Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
The visit occurred in November 2010, only two months before popular uprisings in the Middle East, dubbed the Arab Spring, catalyzed the ousting and assassination of his father later in 2011—and just a few months before Canada would join a NATO coalition conducting airstrikes against Gaddafi’s military forces in Libya.
According to Mr. Babcock, this was a “private visit” and costs paid by GAC—just under $600—were to “facilitate his arrival in Canada.”
Those costs, out of the Government Hospitality Allotment, included paying for a hotel room, transportation and “per diems.” The use of the fund implies that Mr. Gaddafi was here on invitation from a member of the Canadian government, but GAC couldn’t provide additional details.
“We have no further information on the purpose of his private visit or the nature of his programme,” Mr. Babcock said.
Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, the heir apparent to his father, had been denied a Canadian student visa in 1997. And Canadian company SNC-Lavalin, which ran projects in Libya, was implicated in an alleged plot to protect his brother as the Libyan regime was crumbling in 2011.
But the reason for his one-day visit to Canada in 2010 remains a mystery.
Recent reports indicate Mr. Gaddafi was sentenced to death by a Libyan court in Tripoli last July, but it was unclear whether the sentence would be carried out because he was being held by a group unfriendly to the Tripoli government.
Obama’s 2009 visit more costly than first reported
Most of the 316 visits, unlike Mr. Howard’s and Mr. Gaddafi’s, were by sitting heads of state and senior ministers from foreign governments. Heads of international organizations and, in some cases, royalty were also welcomed by the Canadian government.
Costs can cover anything from accommodation, rental vehicles, lunches and dinners, gifts and translation services.
The most expensive visit was a one-day tour to Ottawa by US president Barack Obama in February 2009. The figure maintained by GAC in the document, $563,031, is almost $140,000 higher than previously reported. Reports in 2009 had indicated that another $1 million was spent by RCMP and several million more by the Ottawa Police Department to facilitate the visit.
By comparison, a one-day visit from British prime minister David Cameron in 2011 had cost $68,614.
Other costly visits were made by the emperor and empress of Japan in 2009 and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006. Most of the press about Ms. Rice’s visit to Halifax at the time surrounded rumours of a romance with then-foreign minister Peter MacKay.
Invariably, the most costly visits were made by foreign political leaders, such as French, German, Chinese, Ukrainian and Latvian presidents and Indian and Australian prime ministers.
Huffington Post reported that a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April 2015 cost $373,000. In 2010, the bill for a visit by the previous Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, came up to more than $250,000.
According to the spreadsheet, about nine to 12 representatives of international organizations visit Canada on our dollar every year and between one and three royal visits occur per year.
The costs for 18 royal visits in eight years were comparable to the costs for 80 international organization representatives in the same timespan—both just over $1 million. About seven or eight presidents or prime ministers visit each year, with financial help from Canada, costing GAC $6.1 million from 2006 until 2014.
The government also paid for some visits by religious leaders. The Aga Khan visited Canada six times over eight years, costing the foreign department just under $200,000.
The most frequent visits over the timespan came from representatives of La Francophonie, China, Israel and Mexico.
Original Article
Source: embassynews.ca/
Author: Marie-Danielle Smith
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