Stephen Harper’s northern tour cost taxpayers $786,000

The Privy Council Office — the department that supports the prime minister — estimated its share of the cost at $165,392. That appears to include everything from expenses for the Prime Minister’s Office staff, including the prime minister’s official photographer and communications staff, to a claim for a $69.13 dinner at “Yummy Shawarma” in Iqaluit.

The numbers do not include the salaries of the bureaucrats, political staff and police accompanying Harper on the trip.

The price tag is sure to raise eyebrows among critics of Harper’s annual northern sojourn, who have accused the prime minister of using it as a taxpayer-funded photo op.

“People should know what it costs for him to bring his entourage in,” said NDP MP Dennis Bevington (Northwest Territories), who requested a breakdown of the trip’s cost.

“We have people that are going hungry in the North, because there’s not enough money in the Nutrition North program. It’s really, I mean this is a very large amount of money.”

But Harper’s director of communications, Jason MacDonald, defended the cost of the trip, saying the prime minister is “proud” to travel to different parts of Canada.

“As these numbers demonstrate, it is expensive to operate in Canada’s North,” MacDonald wrote in an email.

“To suggest that money spent profiling and celebrating Canada’s Northern communities is somehow a poor investment demonstrates that only our government can be trusted to protect and advance the needs of Northern and rural Canadians. We will not ignore 40 per cent of Canada simply because it’s expensive to get to.”

Harper began his trip in Whitehorse on Aug. 20, before travelling to Fort Smith, N.W.T., and Cambridge Bay and Pond Inlet in Nunavut. Over the course of the first few days, Harper had a handful of public events and took around eight questions from reporters.

When he arrived in Pond Inlet, Harper boarded HMCS Kingston, which was in the North to take part in the search for the Franklin Expedition. Media and staff were transported to the CCGS Des Groseilliers, to sail to Arctic Bay. Harper had no public events at Arctic Bay, and quickly boarded a Hercules aircraft to travel back to Pond Inlet.

No cost was provided for the Kingston’s trip, but the Des Groseilliers cost $62,800 alone. That includes a 12-minute, $582 trip for Harper’s official photographer on a helicopter, after the Kingston and the icebreaker stopped to survey a large iceberg.

The costs also do not include one of the most impressive backdrops on Harper’s trip, the Canadian Forces’ annual northern exercises, dubbed Operation Nanook. While not technically part of the cost of the trip, taxpayers were still billed $164 for one Fisheries and Oceans media liaison during the operation.

Media outlets following Harper, including the Star, paid their own way on the trip.

The RCMP refused to comment on the price tag, with a national division spokeswoman saying it was simply the cost of doing business.

$786,442 – Total cost of the trip, not including salaries

$81,392 – Overtime, meals, accommodation and travel for RCMP officers on Aug. 22 in Fort Smith, N.W.T.

2,500 – Estimated population of Fort Smith, N.W.T.

$116,640 – Total cost of flights on government Airbus during the trip for media, staff, delegates.

$880 – Cost of 60 military meal rations handed out at York Sound, Nunavut.

$69.13 – Bill at Iqaluit’s “Yummy Shawarma.”