From the “how can we miss you when you won’t go away” file, a Daily Mail story forces us to endure former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s habitual smug smile beaming through a cloud of carbon hypocrisy. Posting on Instagram, where he continues to drag his kids into the public eye after pleading for the press to respect their privacy, “Third of the kid trips this summer: Italy with Ella-Grace. Loved exploring Rome, Siena, Florence and Lake Como with her.” The others were to Switzerland “for some mountaineering, hiking, via ferrata-ing, and more melted cheese than anyone should safely eat” and to British Columbia which at least is in Canada. Yes, the same Justin Trudeau who was so recently hectoring us about the need for all of us to cut our carbon footprints. Didn’t he mean a word of it? Or did he only mean that peasants should not fly but he should because he’s royalty? And if he went away without going away, we note that his successors seem just as devoted to flying about denouncing carbon, often on pretexts as flimsy as they are self-important.

Even the Financial Post recently ran a lickspittle headline “In Warsaw, Carney deepens Canada’s defence, trade ties with Poland” over equally obsequious text resembling a government press release that started:

“Prime Minister Mark Carney is striking a new strategic partnership with Poland that will see Canada deepen its ties in trade, defence and energy with the fast-growing European economy.”

Well, no. Canada trades with Poland, of course, on a modest scale. But not because politicians grip it and grin. As for defence, we have no military. And we’re bungling the energy file through a queasy combination of inertia and zealotry while investment flees Canada. But Carney is flying about sounding good… at least to himself. And he’s also off to Germany (and Latvia) to blah blah blah. Have they no telephones or videoconferencing applications on their portable computers?

Other ministers are trailing along, including our Minister of Energy and Natural Resources “to Strengthen Canada–Germany Energy Partnership” on the apparent assumption that the PM alone cannot do it. Or that it’s nice to visit Germany. Yes, the same Germany to which Trudeau refused to sell Liquified Natural Gas, telling their Chancellor there was no business case for it while the latter tried to give him money to get it.

Meanwhile the Minister of International Trade is jetting off to Brazil and Columbia “ to advance Canada’s trade and investment relationships in Latin America.” But please do not ask what metric they will use to determine whether his trip even covered its costs in terms of increased relationships. It’s not that kind of rhetoric. As when the “Minister of Jobs and Families and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario” blasted off for “George, South Africa” to be expensively and carbon-intensively pompous:

“Meeting the challenges of our time means leading with ambition, unity and action. At the G20 Labour and Employment Ministerial Meeting, Minister Hajdu reinforced Canada’s leadership to support inclusive growth, youth employment, gender equality and inclusion in the workforce, to ensure no one is left behind in a rapidly changing world.”

Think they were meeting in tents and drinking tap water?

Canada’s state broadcaster, beneficiary of lavish aid from Trudeau when he was in power, recently ran a “Fido ate my climate” story about a survey revealing what idiots people are about their own climate footprint that included:

“The top three individual actions that help the climate, including avoiding plane flights, choosing not to get a dog and using renewable electricity, were also the three that participants underestimated the most.”

Surely not the current or the ex-PM, though. They must know flying is verboten unless you’re special. Which they also know they are.

By the same token, Bloomberg may be all-in on the climate crisis and fretful about the masses flying hither and yon. But if you’re in the aristocracy, why then they murmur discreetly about “Secret European Destinations Where Rich People Are Hiding Out This Summer/ In these six up-and-coming regions, luxury is on the rise and the masses have yet to catch on.” It’s all rather above our pay grade, including:

“It wasn’t long ago that luxury travelers planned their itineraries to see and be seen. Now the ultimate flex is receding entirely from public view…. Stealth wealth may have given way to flashiness in 2025, but stealth travel is still all the rage.”

Nobody cares when we go to the cottage anyway. But if you were one of us instead of one of them:

“Clients are increasingly favoring places that require a genuine effort to reach, signaling a desire for experiences that are intentionally off the beaten path and unavailable to the masses: Lake Orta over Lake Como; Corsica over Cannes; Patmos over Mykonos; Menorca over Mallorca; and private island resorts throughout the Caribbean, such as Como Parrot Cay or Jumby Bay Island, over the high-profile hangouts of Saint Barth’s.”

Ah yes. And nothing says climate conscience like a private island resort in the Caribbean or Patmos over (yuck) Mykonos.

The Canadian government seems especially prone to this sort of thing, or possibly we just notice it more because it’s more present in our news feed. For instance “Minister Anand concludes successful visit to Finland to strengthen partnerships between Canada and Nordic countries”. We won’t get into the gassy rhetoric that includes invariably describing trips as “successful” followed by meaningless boilerplate like:

“This initiative reflects the two countries’ commitment to deepening bilateral cooperation and advancing joint efforts in transatlantic security, cyber resilience, multilateralism, democracy, climate action, open trade and promoting shared values in the North Atlantic regions.”

We actually pay people handsomely to generate it, which is odd since it’s neither hard nor useful. And it’s hard to know what they’d consider an unsuccessful trip unless it would be a minister being refused boarding because he was already a mile high. But we digress.

The point is that Canadian ministers are forever flying about to utter meaningless verbiage about pointless meetings, despite telling us that the sky is on fire due to carbon emissions and we must all stop fueling the blaze. As we have asked before, do they not have cellular telephones, electronic mail or this new-fangled “videoconferencing”? Or any sense of shame?

Without wishing to seem rude to Finland, it is a small country on the periphery of Europe and if Canada did have a strategic partnership with it nobody would care including Vladimir Putin. And yet we also hear “Minister Joly to hold teleconference following visit to Sweden and Finland”.

Who? Oh, that would be “the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Industry and Minister responsible for Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions”, who used to hold Anand’s post of Foreign Affairs where she was humiliatingly conspicuously out of her depth. But since the Foreign Minister was in Finland, why did the “Minister responsible for Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions” need to go there too, and at the same time? Even if Finland had a world-class regional development system, and actually its regional governments are weak, she could get them to send a PDF about it.

As for Industry, again without wanting to seem rude is Finland an industrial giant? Or do services make up 66% of its GDP? So pity the reporter, if any, assigned to cover that callback and try not to ask any questions for which the hapless minister did not have narcoleptic talking points. (Joly also apparently visited the Swedish factory where Saab makes the Gripen-e fighter jet, which Canada’s government might be considering to replace or supplement the F-35. According to news reports “The review is to be completed by the end of the summer and Joly says her role in it is to ensure the Canadian government understands all its options.” But the claim that visiting a factory to get the PR tour will help her do so is unpersuasive even if it were remotely credible that she’s master of this file.)

As for Trudeau, the flaunting of his wealth and privilege does seem to have irritated a lot of people because of what he did to Canada’s economy during a self-satisfied decade of failed policy and fiscal recklessness interspersed with lavish trips that made a mockery of our conflict-of-interest rules as well as his climate advocacy. But surely it’s the last that matters most. He preached endless tiresome shrill sermons, while doing the opposite because, presumably, he was just so important a public figure.

Now that he’s a private figure… he’s still flying about constantly, living the high life, spewing carbon and loving it and himself. And, we dare say, still advocating Net Zero for the rest of us chumps.