The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), a citizens’ advocacy group, reported on Wednesday that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spent nearly $160,000 on luxury airline food during a single trip abroad.
CTF based its report on government records of the expenditures made when Carney took a week-long trip to Athens, Abu Dhabi, Johannesburg, and the Canary Islands in November 2025, bringing a 55-person entourage along for the ride. The enormous spending on meals worked out to $2,850 per person.
Some of the bill could be attributed to the high quality of the cuisine, which included dinners of Chilean sea bass, beef tenderloin, and chicken chasseur, but CTF also noted some very high item costs, like $90 for orange juice and $176 for a case of bottled water.
“Carney spent more money on airplane food during one trip than the average family will spend on groceries in almost a decade,” complained CTF federal director Franco Terrazzano in a press release quoted by Canada’s National Post.
“Carney keeps promising to spend less, but if he isn’t willing to cut back on airplane food, then what will he spend less on?” he asked.
Terrazzano pointed to more reasonable food bills for trips taken by other Canadian officials and declared: “If other politicians and bureaucrats can travel without racking up these outrageous bills, then Carney can spend less while flying abroad.”
“It’s possible for the prime minister to travel internationally without billing taxpayers six figures for airplane food, so we need Carney to make sure these types of bills never happen again,” he said.
The National Post noted that CTF previously slammed Carney for spending almost $200,000 on catering for three flights beyond Canada’s borders earlier in 2025, including $94,000 for a trip to Rome.
The total bill for airborne chow during Carney’s first year as prime minister came to almost $1 million — and the Toronto Sun reported in June that even that figure could be off because the totals provided by the Canadian defense department for meals aboard “CANFORCE One” did not match invoices and other documents obtained by the media.
Not only were Carney’s food bills much higher than those of most Canadian officials, but CTF pointed out that the Canadian government knew it had a longstanding problem with excessive travel expenses, and had promised — in writing — to do better under withering public criticism. Carney also personally promised to spend less than his predecessors.
The Toronto Sun grumbled on Wednesday that despite his promises of responsible spending, Carney had Canadian taxpayers “paying for caviar wishes on a meatloaf budget.”
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