The Carneys are living their best vacation lives in Tuscany . And back home, some of us are again debating a prime minister’s vacation choices. Or not so much debating as, mostly, kvetching, in roughly equal parts about the vacation itself and about anyone who would be so gauche and unworldly as to question the vacation. “Lots of Canadians go to Caribbean all-inclusives, right? So why shouldn’t the PM go to Tuscany?”
Tellingly, that sort of absurd comparison — we’re all prime minister, really; Tuscany isn’t much different than that 2.5-star resort in Punta Cana you saw on the Air Transat package-vacations website — is the only card most “none of our business” people know how to play. “Oh, so you think the PM and his wife should dress in sackcloth, don crowns of thorns, and camp out on East Hastings?”
If you genuinely don’t care, that’s fine. We certainly have bigger fish to fry, and there’s only so much room in the national fryolator. But this is self-evidently our business, and no one should apologize for thinking so.
We pay for it, first of all. There’s no official hourly cost for getting one of the Challenger jets into the air, but various reports suggest it’sat least pushing $10,000 . (PMs using the jets on vacation, which we are constantlytold they mustbecause of security concerns , owe the treasury the commercial value of the equivalent economy-class tickets. That would be around $4,300 per passenger on Air Canada to and from Rome, last-minute in August, or around $2,700 on Air Transat.)
Secondly, the federal government regulates Canada’s sclerotic, despised airline industry, among other things forbidding foreign-carrier competition on domestic routes. The transport minister never has to put up with anything less than commercial business class. As long as ministers are in office they’ll never have to worry about “air-passenger rights,” which no doubt partly explains why Canadian air passengers enjoy far fewer rights (to compensation, rebooking on other airlines, hotel rooms, etc.) than Americans, Europeans or Brits.
That’s not because Air Canada and WestJet donate lavishly to political parties, which would be illegal. It’s just to keep all the toy soldiers in the Laurentian sandbox fat and happy in the bar at the Château Laurier: MPs, ministers and would-be ministers, lobbyists, strategists, consultants and unidentified appetizer-grazers. For that reason alone, we should insist the PM endure commercial air travel on personal business. And in economy.
I absolutely loathe the idea, often heard in Canada, that “G7 leaders can’t fly commercial.” It speaks to the hermetically sealed box inside which most Canadian political thinking occurs. And to my ears all it really means is, “I am someone who likes to pretend that Canada and its prime minister are much more important than they actually are.”
Keir Starmer flew commercial to Madeira for a family vacation in 2024. Boris Johnson flew commercial to Slovenia for his (latest) honeymoon in 2022, and later that year British Airways to the Dominican Republic, with wife and baby along (in economy). Theresa May flew commercial on her various hiking holidays in Switzerland and Italy. David Cameron’s vacations in office included flying low-cost carriers EasyJet, Ryanair and Vueling, two of which aren’t even British and none of which has ever heard of business class. (Indeed, Ryanair’s brilliantly funny social media team would mock the very idea.)
The United Kingdom has nuclear weapons: somewhere between 200 and 260 warheads . Ten Downing Street matters in a global crisis. Yet the British PM can spend a few hours aloft, completely incommunicado. (Ryanair’s social media team would probably mock the idea of inflight Wi-Fi as well.)
When a global crisis blows up, no one ever asks, “hold the phone, where’s the Canadian delegation?” The Canadian PM could be on the moon or 20,000 leagues under the sea, for all anyone would care. But no, no, he mustn’t ever fly commercial. The RCMP says so, and they are certainly a disinterested party.
British PMs are routinely criticized for not simply vacationing in Britain, of course, which is also very healthy. It’s hardly a job for life. Before Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher, the last person to spend more than 10 years as prime minister in a single stretch retired 99 years ago. Once you’re done, you can go anywhere you like, no questions asked. Meanwhile your job comes with a splendid, secluded summer home you’ll never have access to again: Harrington Lake here in Canada, Chequers in Britain. Use it, maybe?
Indeed, I also loathe the idea that Canada somehow isn’t worth spending time in, in August no less. Canada sparkles in August, coast to coast to coast. Carney hasn’t spent all that much time here lately. Maybe use your private-jet privileges to refamiliarize yourself!
Among the biggest problems for normal folks, obviously, is the cost of summer-vacationing in Canada relative to abroad. As of this summer, Air Transat flies to Albania, where a decent hotel room is $20 and a donkey ride is $5, and you get to keep the donkey. I exaggerate. It’s a fascinating country, a bit odd, littered with the ruins of ancient empires, with great seafood, friendly and helpful locals. And like most of the Balkans, it’s cheaper than sausages.
Or I could fly my hypothetical Toronto family of four to and from Vancouver for five nights over Labour Day weekend, without any checked bags, for nearly $5,000. And then pay nearly $3,000 for one room at a Quality Inn. And then, I don’t know, I guess we just have cool ranch Doritos for dinner.
That’s a serious national-unity issue. It would be nice if our economist PM had some ideas about how we might address it, rather than a bottle of Brunello on the go on a picnic blanket under a cypress tree.
National Post
cselley@postmedia.com
