The government finally came clean and admitted that the total bill paid by the taxpayers to take the Hair, the hairdresser and some friends to Israel in January was over a million dollars. And there was no justification for it. It was gratuitous. It was political. It was a deep embarrassment for Canadians.
What, for example, was optometrist Gila Martow doing on that trip? At the time, Ms. Martow was the candidate for the February provincial by-election in the Ontario riding of Thornhill. She managed to get a nice memento of the trip—a picture of herself with Prime Minister Harper of Canada and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Finding out precisely how much the Canadian taxpayers paid for that little gift would take years of Access-to-Information applications.
There were about 200 people on that junket and they could not all fit on the Hair’s Airbus. Guest airfares added $300,000 on the bill. Bureaucrats from the Privy Council Office were not allowed on the Airbus and they alone spent another $148,000 on commercial airfares. Israel is not an inexpensive place to visit and there was another $676,000 spent on accommodation. Canadians were damn lucky that this little excursion was only for a one week holiday. After all it was January and the beaches at Tel Aviv are lovely at that time of year.
And who but a Conservative politician would whine to the Prime Minister’s staff about having his picture taken with Prime Minister Harper at the Western Wall in Old Jerusalem? That one incident stood out to Christians, Jews and Muslims alike as the height of rude, insensitive sacrilegious political chutzpah.
Mind you, speaking of chutzpah, the Israeli politicians are not above their little joke. Naming a bird sanctuary after Prime Minister Harper during that visit was the height of something very silly. The only good news is the number of times Israeli bond sellers have renamed a forest to commemorate another million dollar investor.
But Mr. Harper thanked them by addressing the Israeli Knesset. Luckily most of the Israeli parliamentarians were able to stay awake during a litany of platitudes and ill-considered hard-line support. Most of Mr. Harper’s Canadian claque was spared the boredom of the event.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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