One luxury Canada can do without in budget-trimming times is a foreign aid minister who goes in for conspicuous consumption at the public’s expense.
Ms. Oda showed appallingly bad judgment last June in having her staff move her to one of London’s swankiest hotels, the famous Savoy, when she attended an international conference on immunizing children in poor countries.
She then left taxpayers to foot the bill for this self-indulgent whim for 10 months before reimbursing them $1,353.81 last Monday, a few hours after The Canadian Press broke the story.
As a crowning insult, Ms. Oda had an aide explain she broke no spending rules, but didn’t want taxpayers to pick up the tab. It took another day for her to manage an apology.
What a feeble pack of excuses. Ministers should set a personal example for their departments on responsible travel spending.
If Ms. Oda needs 10 months or a rulebook to tell her the Savoy was not a legitimate public expense, she has no business being in charge of a department. As for reimbursing taxpayers after being outed, there’s no credit in that.
This is Ms. Oda’s second embarrassing bling outburst as a minister. At the 2006 Juno Awards in Halifax, she and her staff blew $5,500 on limousines. She later repaid $2,200 of that. Yet her fancy for limousines has endured.
On Monday, Ms. Oda finally repaid the cancellation cost of her original booking at the London conference, plus the expense of upgrading to a $665-a-night Savoy room. It took several more days for her to accept responsibility for the $2,850 cost of a limousine to ferry her between the five-star conference hotel, which wasn’t good enough for her, and the Savoy, advertised as “the last word in style, luxury and discreet technology.”
When the government is cutting $380 million from the aid budget, the last word for this sort of ministerial behaviour is revolting.
Canada needs a foreign aid minister whose attention is focused on her job and on those who need our help, not on the splendour of her hotel room.
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: editorial
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