Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's words and actions continue to become more divorced from each other with each passing day.  Confronted by a reporter during a press conference last week, Trudeau dismissed the pointed questions on the exorbitant moving expenses claimed by his top two aides who were "the brains" behind "Team Trudeau".

"Canadians expect all of us to work very hard and be responsible custodians of the public purse as we deliver on the growth and opportunity that Canadians elected us to deliver," said Trudeau straight-faced.

When you project going nearly $30 billion in the hole — $20 billion more than you originally promised — in your first year in power it takes special acting chops or aloofness to pull the "responsible custodians of the public purse" line off with the appearance of sincerity.  His performance is all the more impressive due to the constant revelations — mostly from access to information requests from nosey reporters — the "transparent" Liberals are tossing around Canadians' money with reckless abandon.

In the case of Trudeau's chums' — chief of staff Katie Telford and principal secretary Gerald Butts — combined moving expenses of $207,000 smacked the taxpayer as maybe a tad high.  Telford and Butts conceded as much themselves when they posted a joint Facebook message to say they had a sudden compunction about the taking of $23,000 and $20,000 respectively from taxpayers for "miscellaneous moving expenses" and now think its "unreasonable".  (A frugal Butts — making a hefty $640,000 profit from selling his Toronto home — also now thinks its "unreasonable" for taxpayers to cover the full amount of his land transfer tax for the purchase of his new home worth over $1 million, but that they should still cover the tax up to what an average Ottawa home costs.)

Of course there is no retrospective-remorse-only-because-we-got-caught happening here.  Telford and Butts were oblivious on how to expense claims because the third party, Brookfield Global Relocation Services, failed to inform Trudeau's top aides what they were entitled to expense, according to the PMO's director of communications, Kate Purchase.

Surely had the Brookfield not slipped up on its policy of informing "transferees" what they we're entitled to claim Butts and Telford would've certainly realized that squeezing every penny wasn't wise.

It's also interesting to note that three other PMO staffers' claimed less than $20,000 combined in their moving expense claims.  The discrepancy in their relatively meager costs compared to Telford and Butts can likely be explained by these employees probably not having real estate costs involved in their moves (otherwise they're probably miffed right about now).  The Liberal's claim the rich "should pay their fair share", but apparently the Liberals also believe the rich in government should get their unfair share from Canadians.

In regards to Trudeau's culpability or lack thereof in this greedy cash grab, the PM excused away the expenses by claiming they were done in accordance to the rules put in place by the Harper government (Harper got a few things right apparently, though now Trudeau's requested the rules be changed).  However, the PM skirted around the fact that as the boss of his masterminds it was his brain that okayed signing-off on their excessive moving and incidental costs.

The idealistic "sunny ways" Liberals proved they aren't above joining in the blame game when they pointed out the Conservatives spent $325,000 over nine years for PMO moving expenses, omitting the detail that that amount was for 18 staffers over nine years compared to the Liberals' $220,000 for five PMO staffers in their government's first year.

As for the mysterious "miscellaneous moving expenses" claimed by Telford and Butts, the self-described "open and transparent" government has been less than forthcoming on clarifying these vague expense claims the two are now "uncomfortable" with having claimed.

This kerfuffle played out in the last two weeks was only amplified by other questionable Liberal expenses coming to light.

The Toronto Sun reported this week that two international trips for Trudeau included wining and dining expenses of over $150,000 for onboard flights' food and beverage, and that the average amount spent on each passenger was $1,300 of taxpayers' money.

Also this week The Rebel reported that the Liberals' spent almost $133,000 on a dinner for the Mexican president.  They rented out the entire Casa Loma fine dining restaurant, where over 200 guests ate $120-a-plate meals and drank $11,000 worth in booze.  Even some of the lapdog press were invited to the luxurious evening; four Toronto Star employees (Public Editor Martin Regg Cohn, Editor in chief Michael Cooke, Foreign Writer Ramina Jimenez and columnist Paul Wells) enjoyed the taxpayer-funded feast.

Finally, just yesterday The Globe and Mail reported the Liberals spent $200,000 on getting advice from a "British 'deliverology' guru" on how to keep their campaign promises.  Thank goodness for the Liberals their promise on the yearly deficit amount is already broken and there was no clear promise made on prudential spending.

These most recent examples of frivolous government spending add to a laundry list of wasteful expenditures already incurred by Trudeau's nascent government.

It will be interesting to see how much longer Trudeau can ride on his high horse from Camelot declaring to fight for the middle class before Canadians realize Robin Hood is really just a fraud slashing the public purse for himself and his merry friends.

Written by Graeme C. Gordon