FEATURED HEADLINE
Raymonde Gagné, the unelected Speaker of the Senate of Canada appointed in May 2023 by then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and her traveling companions have charged Canadian taxpayers $875,677 for at least fourteen international trips in the roughly three years since she took the role. The true total is higher still because full costs for additional journeys to Chile, Tunisia and the Netherlands remain unreported in the public Speakers’ Delegation Financial Reports. That sum represents pure public money spent on flights, hotels, per diems, meals and receptions for an official who represents no riding and answers to no voters, while ordinary Canadians continue to struggle with the cost of living.
One single March 2026 trip to Japan alone for a “courtesy call” on a foreign minister cost $107,594, including nearly $92,000 in transportation for Gagné, her spouse, three other senators and two staff members. A September 2024 journey to New Zealand billed at $118,965 took the same group to Rotorua, a well-known tourist destination, for “business calls” and a photo opportunity with a local mayor. The March 2025 excursion to Spain and the United Kingdom ran to $105,156 and included an audience that produced a ceremonial sword from King Charles III plus a $2,822 dinner for twelve at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London, roughly $235 per person. An earlier 2024 trip through Côte d’Ivoire and Benin cost another $101,816, complete with tourist-site visits and more than $12,000 charged for the Speaker’s spouse alone.
Additional destinations such as Switzerland, France, the United States, Belgium, Brazil, Romania, the Czech Republic, South Africa and the United Kingdom-Ireland combination added further six-figure and high five-figure amounts, along with hospitality bills that included a $1,927 luncheon in Madrid and other receptions running into the thousands. Gagné’s spouse accompanied her on multiple of these taxpayer-funded outings. Over the same period the Speaker of the elected House of Commons spent about $104,000 less on comparable international travel. Gagné receives an annual salary of roughly $268,300 plus residence and vehicle allowances, yet the expense records show no reimbursements returned to the public purse.
Franco Terrazzano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has publicly stated that an unelected senator has no business billing taxpayers nearly a million dollars to fly around the world and that Prime Minister Mark Carney must hold Gagné accountable. The primary responsibility rests with Raymonde Gagné herself as the official who authorized and led the delegations, with secondary accountability attaching to the former prime minister who appointed her both to the Senate and to the Speaker’s chair and to the current prime minister who now oversees the government under which these expenditures continue. The documented figures come directly from the parliamentary financial disclosures and confirm a sustained pattern of high-cost foreign travel that has consumed hundreds of thousands of dollars of public funds with no electoral consequence for the individual at the centre of it.
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