Pierre Poilievre Spent $1,298,257.15 of taxpayer dollars for salaries, travel and contracts.

Every few months, the Government of Canada releases a report on salaries and expenditures for all Members of Parliament who hold a further office outside of their regular day-to-day operations as an MP. These individuals include The Speaker of the House, the party whip, and house leaders, as well as the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

These amounts encompass their staff’s salaries and any travel/hospitality expenses that the minister or the staff incurs. This is an important tool for Canadians to use and see how their tax dollars are being spent on certain government operations. The report is transparent and clear.

Released every few months, the report is usually a few months delayed. Just yesterday, we received our Q1 report for 2023, covering the period from April 1, 2023, to June 30, 2023. It may be a mundane spreadsheet, but it contained some damning evidence against the Leader of the Opposition for the third report in a row.

During Q1 of 2023, Pierre Poilievre spent a total of $1,298,257.15 on salaries, travel, hospitality, and contracts for his role as the leader of the opposition, his official residence Stornoway, and his role in the National Caucus Research Office. Of the $1.2 million figure, $100,842.22 was just for travel, and $11,840.84 was for hospitality.

For comparison, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a total of $522,968.31 for all categories, and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh had $308,301.84 respectively. It’s important to note that the Prime Minister's travel and hospitality are part of a different budget, as he travels on official plans, motorcades, and his security is paid for by the RCMP and the PPS.

Regardless, Pierre Poilievre has spent $775,288.84 more than Trudeau and more than both Trudeau and Singh combined. This raises the question of where this money is going. Since he became the Leader of the Opposition, Pierre has been traveling across the country hosting rallies and events to boost his message, one of which is tied to conspiracy theories and misinformation.

Now, Elections Canada has rules around campaigning outside of election time, and Pierre and his staff are aware of this, stopping these events just on the line of being an official campaign event. One of those loopholes is not labeling it a campaign event paid for by the party's donations and fundraising but making it a “Government event” and billing the taxpayers for the cost, making it a cost within the office of the opposition.

Pierre and his team know that the only people who will notice this are political science and data nerds like myself, and the general public will not even see these reports released by the House of Commons. Furthermore, with there being no limit on what a person can bill the government for, there are these extreme multimillion-dollar figures.

The irony and hypocrisy of all this are that Pierre and the Conservative party he leads are pushing a narrative that Trudeau spends too much taxpayer dollars on vacations and time off, all seemingly trying to hide these inevitable reports that come out every few months. We went through this same rotation three months ago when this same report was released.

The evidence is clear that the Conservative party is using taxpayer dollars to campaign and spread their message across the country. This message includes saying that the current government is spending recklessly and wasting taxpayer dollars. I'm sure a lot of Canadians believe that this extreme expense bill is also reckless spending and it needs to be investigated and checked for its legitimacy.

Until next time.