Canadian Diplomats Spent Over $139,000 on Concert and Gala Tickets Since 2019: Records

The West Block of Parliament Hill is seen through the window of the Sir John A. Macdonald Building in Ottawa in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

The Department of Foreign Affairs has spent over $139,000 on Canadian diplomats buying tickets to concert, gala, or other events abroad since 2019, according to newly released federal records.

The department wrote in an Inquiry of Ministry recently tabled in the House of Commons that since May 1, 2019, diplomats have spent $139,114 on tickets to events while overseas, with the list of ticket purchases spanning 11 pages, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

Conservative MP Doug Shipley had requested the figures in an order paper question on May 5, asking for government-wide expenditures related to purchasing “gala or concert tickets.”

Spending on the event tickets included over $13,000 for Cirque du Soleil performances in Lisbon, Madrid, New York City, and Vilnius.

Canada’s ambassador to Serbia also billed Ottawa over $890 to attend a Bryan Adams concert, while other diplomats spent about $475 on tickets to a block party in Bangkok, Thailand.

Canada’s ambassador to Colombo spent over $3,000 to attend a dance party and banquet in Sri Lanka that celebrated “15 years of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer activism.”

Cabinet’s disclosure of the expenditures comes several months after Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said Ottawa would create savings “from government operations.”

Freeland said after introducing Budget 2023 in March that Ottawa would find $7 billion worth of savings across government without cutting services to Canadians. Reporters asked Freeland whether those savings would come from public-service layoffs or hiring freezes, and she said they would not.

“Those savings will come from government operations,” she said, “and I think that those savings are eminently obtainable.”

However, Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux told a Parliamentary committee in April that he saw no cuts to unnecessary government spending following the government’s new budget introduction.

“Successive governments have made promises of reducing travel, and it happens for a while but it does not really happen,” Giroux told the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance on April 18.

“Has the government lost control of its spending?” Giroux said later during his testimony. “I don’t know if it has lost control, but I can certainly confirm that spending has increased sharply.”