Governor General Spent $90K on Trip to Her Hometown

Governor General Mary Simon speaks about Queen Elizabeth II during an address at Rideau Hall, in Ottawa on Sept. 8, 2022. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Governor General Mary Simon spent $90,615 for a five-day tour of her hometown, Kangiqsualujjuaq, Que., and surrounding region.

Kangiqsualujjuaq is in the remote Nunavik region, and travel there is challenging, cabinet said in an Inquiry of Ministry reviewed by Blacklock’s Reporter. More than half the budget, almost $66,000, was spent on charter aircraft.

Simon came under fire late last year when it came to light that her delegation spent $1.3 million on an eight-day trip to Dubai in 2020.

“Can the governor general prove that spending $1.3 million to go to Expo 2020 in Dubai was a better use of taxpayers’ money than hiring more nurses or helping struggling taxpayers?” Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) director Franco Terrazzano said in a release at the time.

A House of Commons government operations committee last September discussed the costs, including in-flight catering fees amounting to about $218 per meal for the 46 people on the trip.

On her trip to Kangiqsualujjuaq, Simon spent a day visiting the mayor, speaking at local schools, and touring the Kuururjuaq National Park Centre. Her trip to the region was intended to facilitate talks with local officials about education, mental health, and indigenous reconciliation.

“There were no official meals or receptions hosted by the Office of the Secretary to the Governor General during this visit,” said the Inquiry. Accommodation expenses totaled $11,029.

Simon’s office did not respond to The Epoch Times inquiry as of publication.

“Every travel has to be very carefully planned. The objectives of the trip have to be very clearly defined,” Simon told the House in October after the controversy over her Dubai trip. “I don’t have a role to play in anything that is associated with logistics or the operation of the trip.”