Justin Trudeau takes day trip to Bermuda for funeral of family friend
English tycoon Peter Green as a longtime family friend and Trudeau Foundation benefactor
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OTTAWA — As the sun rose over a frosty November Ottawa morning on Wednesday, the prime minister’s jet was en route to Bermuda to pay respects to a long-time family friend.
Peter Green, the wealthy British businessman who became friends with former prime minister Pierre Trudeau in the 1970s, died this week at the age of 89.
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The PMO’s daily itinerary, released Tuesday evening, announced that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would travel to the North Atlantic island to deliver Green’s eulogy on Wednesday, stressing it would only be a one-day trip, and he would return to the capital the same day.
A public celebration of Green’s life is scheduled to take place on Friday.
Born in Manchester, the English hotel magnate became friends with the elder Trudeau in the mid 1970s, around the same time the former prime ministers stayed at the Green’s family-owned resort, Prospect Estate, near Ocho Rios, Jamaica, during an official visit.
The Greens and Trudeaus remained life-long friends, with Prospect Estate — inherited by Green’s wife from her father, Sir Harold Paton Mitchell, a Conservative politician who served as the party’s vice-chairman during the administration of Winston Churchill — becoming a frequent family vacation destination for both Pierre and Justin.
The Greens are also long-time benefactors of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.
In 2021, the foundation unveiled its first-ever named scholarship program, named in memory of Mary-Jean Mitchell Green, who died of breast cancer in 1990.
The Trudeau Foundation scholarship was established by Green’s sons, Alexander and Andrew.
Prospect Estate was the site of the PM’s 2022 and 2023 Christmas vacations — trips that made headlines for their cost as much as their extravagance.
The Trudeau family spent their 2022 Christmas vacation — their first since the COVID-19 pandemic — at Prospect Estate, a trip that cost taxpayers over $160,000.
The family returned the next year to the same resort, a 10-day trip that government documents revealed to have cost taxpayers over $230,000 — despite the Trudeaus staying in a $9,300-per-night villa at no cost.
The PMO initially stated Trudeau was paying for the trip, but changed its explanation more than a week later, saying he was staying “at no cost at a location owned by family friends.”
That same trip saw the RCAF dispatch a second Challenger 650 business jet to retrieve the PM and his family after the plane they took to Jamaica suffered a breakdown.
Long-standing public policy prohibits Canada’s prime ministers and their families from flying commercially, requiring the use of government aircraft for both personal and business travel.
In an email, PMO spokesperson Jenna Ghassabeh said the prime minister would pay “the equivalent of a commercial airline ticket for his personal travel and that of his accompanying family members.”
Ghassabeh said information on who accompanied the PM on Wednesday’s trip would be forthcoming.
For trips within Canada, the PM uses Bombardier Challenger 650 business jet operated by 412 Transport Squadron, which — according to published RCAF documents — costs $12,000 per flight hour to operate, burning 5,860 litres of fuel per hour.
According to online calculators, the roughly nine-hour round-trip flight between Ottawa and L.F. Wade International Airport in Hamilton, Bermuda, emits around 28,340 kilograms of carbon dioxide.
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