(Ottawa) New year, new trip, same story. The Prime Minister finds himself in the hot seat again over his vacation, this time because he and his family stayed for free at a luxury resort in Jamaica over the holidays.
The Conservative Party accuses Justin Trudeau’s office of having misled the public, because after indicating that the family was paying for their stay on the Caribbean island, his office clarified that the Trudeaus were “accommodated free of charge in accommodation owned to family friends.
The Prime Minister still consulted the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner before this trip, and as he normally does, he “reimburses the equivalent of a commercial plane ticket for his trips personal and those of his family,” added his spokesperson, Mohammad Hussain, on Thursday.
The precise location in Jamaica where Justin Trudeau and his family – his three children and their mother Sophie Grégoire, from whom he separated last August – were housed from December 26 to January 4 has not been specified. According to our information, however, this is the Prospect domain, as first reported by National Post.
It is in this complex where a night in a villa can cost up to US$7,000 that the Trudeau clan celebrated the transition from 2022 to 2023. The trip aroused the ire of conservatives, because the estate belongs to the family Green, contributor to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, who was then in the hot seat.
This time, it is a form of deception that is being denounced in the conservative camp. “With Justin Trudeau, nothing is ever credible. Why not declare from the start that he was going to stay in Jamaica for free? », Wrote MP Luc Berthold on the X platform on Thursday.
Last spring, the Prime Minister never directly responded to questions from the opposition benches regarding accommodation costs. However, he argued that his family and the Greens had been friends for “50 years”.
No blame has been directed to Justin Trudeau for this escapade.
In 2017, the Prime Minister was slapped on the wrist by the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner for his stay on the Aga Khan’s private island. In 2021, he apologized for spending the first-ever Truth and Reconciliation Day surfing in Tofino, British Columbia.