Poilievre demands Canadian health minister denounce Trudeau's 'taxpayer-funded, fuel-guzzling' private jet trips

In Monday’s Question Period, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre asked Canada’s health minister if he would go “into a wacko rant” about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “gas-guzzling private jet” vacations the way he did about summer road trips with the kids.

“Mr. Speaker, last week, the health minister went into a wacko rant accusing parents who take their kids on a road trip of locking them up in a car for 10 days straight without a washroom break, causing the world to burn. All because we've proposed that the government take taxes off gas so that Canadians could have a summer break. Will this health minister break into the same hysteria over his boss's use of a gas-guzzling private jet to vacation all around the world?”

Mark Holland avoided the question and insisted Canadian families would have to drive “44,000 km to get the benefit that they're talking about” from cutting gas taxes. Holland went on to state that the party wants to return to "the days when the Conservative Party would go into climate conferences and attack the action the world was taking to save our planet. I will stand for climate change and so will this party, Mr. Speaker."

Poilievre said it is Trudeau who is traveling 44,000 km. “Those are the vacations his boss takes in a taxpayer-funded, fuel-guzzling private jet. The kind of vacations for which conservatives want to give Canadians a break is to a local campground where they can support the local economy. We know Canadians can't go abroad; all they can do is get in their small vehicle and have a small break. Why won't the government take the tax off so that they can afford to do that?”

When Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault then reiterated Holland’s response, Poilievre reminded the MPs in the House of Commons that if Guilbeault “had his way Canadians wouldn't even be allowed to drive to the grocery store because he wants to abolish roads,” in reference to the minister saying the federal government should no longer be funding road projects.

Polievere then criticized Guilbeault’s arrest as a Greenpeace activist who scaled the CN Tower in Toronto as a publicity stunt.

“Most Canadians don't want to put on an orange jumpsuit or climb a building. They just want to take their kids for a merciful break from this miserable, broken economy. So well the government except our common sense plan to take the tax off gas and diesel?”