Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew says he was justified in racking up a bill of $10,000 to take his chauffeur on international trips.
Pettigrew took his chauffeur to Europe and South America in 2001 and 2002 at a cost to taxpayers of at least $10,000, even though the driver did not transport the minister during the visits, The Globe and Mail reports.
Pettigrew told CTV's Canada AM that his drivers played an administrative and security role during foreign trips.
"I always have two with me on the trip ... and I do believe it is important that everyone in the staff has a complete understanding of my work," he said.
"They are security elements. Just two weeks ago The Ottawa Citizen was saying I did not take enough security with me when I was going on trips."
As Pettigrew's personal chauffeur, Bruno Labonté usually drives his boss around Ottawa and back and forth between Ottawa and Montreal.
Labonté's services are not regularly required during foreign trips in which Canadian delegations are taken under the wing of local officials or Canadian embassies.
However Labonté accompanied Pettigrew on two official trips abroad, stating on one of his expense claims that his role was "escorting the minister," according to documents released to The Globe under the Access to Information Act.
The visits included trips to Lima, Paris and Madrid.
Pettigrew's chief of staff, Francis LeBlanc, told The Globe that Pettigrew will occasionally be accompanied by non-political staffers in an effort to give them a glimpse of how the office operates while in foreign nations.
"We don't do it often, but we do it sometimes," LeBlanc said. "And in the case of Bruno, he has some responsibilities that are not on his official job description."
"We find it helps the coherence of the whole office to sometimes do this."
Another official in the minister's office told The Globe that Labonté was not only Pettigrew's chauffeur but also his "personal security adviser."
Labonté has studied to become a policeman, but has never completed the training, according to The Globe.
On the first trip in 2001, Labonté accompanied Pettigrew to Paris, Brussels and Madrid for bilateral meetings and a visit to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
According to The Globe, Labonté accumulated $2,641.98 in expenses for lodging and meals during the nine-day trip. In addition, the cost of Mr. Labonté's plane ticket in business class was $5,602.38.
The second nine-day trip in 2002 took Labonté and Pettigrew to Mexico for an APEC meeting and then to Peru for a bilateral visit.
Labonté charged the federal government $1,771.91 for the hotels, meals and expenses in South America.
There was no receipt in the documents for Labonté's airfare.
Officials said ministers do not typically bring their own security personnel.
Security also varies widely from one place to another, officials said. Some aides in other ministerial offices remember speeding through foreign cities in motorcades, or simply going from one place to another in taxis.
One aide in a Liberal minister's office said that Pettigrew sometimes liked to rotate foreign trips within his office as a way of thanking his staff.
The information emerged Tuesday as Pettigrew's office attempted to counter negative publicity about the minister's performance.
Pettigrew was criticized last Christmas for being late to respond to the tsunami crisis in Asia and rumours within the government suggest that he will be shuffled out of the job.
His role in producing the much-awaited International Policy Statement was essentially taken over by the Prime Minister's Office, creating more tension between the Foreign Minister's office and the PMO.
Labonté is reported as saying he is not authorized to speak to the media and was therefore not in a position to comment on the expenditures.
