Global Affairs Canada has billed taxpayers over three million dollars on booze alone in a little over five years.
According to documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation through an access to information request, GAC spent over $3.3 million on booze between January 2019 and May 2024. Over 200 other agencies were not accounted for in the CTF tally.
The CTF did the math and found that the single department spent an average of $51,000 on beer, wine and spirits monthly.
“These bureaucrats seem like they’re having a good time, but what value are taxpayers getting from this huge booze bill?” Franco Terrazzano, the federal director of the CTF said in the report. “Billing taxpayers $51,000 a month for booze is mind-boggling, but what’s even crazier is this tab is just for one government department.”
According to documents obtained by the CTF, most of the costs, $1.9 million, were spent on the Canadian Alcoholic Beverages Abroad program, formerly the Canadian Wine Initiative. Launched in 2004, the program purports to help domestic alcohol manufacturers reach foreign markets by making connections on behalf of Canadian companies.
It’s unclear how much Canadians receive back in the form of revenue obtained from the connections made through the program. That still leaves $1.4 million spent on other events from January 2019 to May 2024, leaving a bar tab exceeding $21,500 per month during that five-and-a-half-year window.
The largest single order was $56,684 for GAC officials in Washington D.C., on Feb 20, 2019, for “wine purchases from a special store.”
Other expenditures were over $1,000 on single events such as “The British Emo Beer Battle event” in Washington.
In Warsaw Poland, GAC purchased over $2000 worth of booze on Oct. 15 for “hospitality.”
In March 2021 the foreign affairs department also spent $9,815 on wine for GAC employees in Beijing, China and $8,912 on Wine in New Delhi, India in May 2022.
The documents sometimes showed the purpose of the purchase, such as $1,024 for booze during a “trivia night.” Other times, they only noted that it was a “bulk alcohol purchase” or a replenishment of the government wine stock.
The CTF report breaks down the expenditures, noting that in San Jose, California, GAC “bureaucrats” spent $8,153 in March 2019. Less than two weeks later, those officials spent $2,196 more on booze.
GAC also spent $8,074 on booze in Reykjavik, Iceland, on Jan. 23, 2020. Two months later, taxpayers paid another bill, this time totalling $2,849.
“The price of booze went up when Ottawa increased alcohol taxes, but that’s not a good excuse for these runaway bills,” Terrazzano said in the CTF’s report. “I like to party as much as the next guy, but maybe these bureaucrats could chill it on the cold ones when the government is more than $1 trillion in debt and taxpayers are struggling.”
A representative from GAC responded to True North’s requests for comment but could not meet the deadline.