Do you think Panetta or for that matter Gates when he was the Secretary of Defense for the US flies commercial airlines ?
Shit, I know a local developer who owns two jets and a helicopter and never flies commercial.
If you believe that a Challenger jet flight costs Canadians 10s of thousands of dollars more than if it wasn’t flown, then I’ve got a bridge in Alaska to sell ya.
Have some fuckin respect if not for MacKay, at least for the office of the Minister of Defense for Canada.
But he’s a money grubbing supercilious douchebag!
Agreed on the rest of it though.
I agree that this is a weird “Scandal.” What the heck do we have those jets for, anyway, if not flying around top government officials?
I don’t expect the Minister of Defense to be grabbing a Delta connection through Atlanta.
It would be funny as hell if he were ararred on the way through.
I’ll have some respect for him if he earns it. He’s not a fucking developer and he’s not royalty. He works for me.
He’s an asshole.
linky please
I’m not sure if there is a link to MacKay’s asshole.
I agree that for the most part it is a non-issue. If the job requires him to fly from Vancouver to Halifax and back every day, so be it. I do have an issue with using the plane to catch up with his family for a vacation.
He’s no flyin’ Brian.
This. If he’s using government planes for government work, that’s fine. If he’s using it for vacation or non-work related activities, that’s what I have a problem with. Same goes for the military personnel flying these aircraft to vacation spots.
A Challenger CL-601 is a rather expensive aircraft to service; the number of hours and cycles it flies is directly related to it’s operating costs, but this citehas over $4200 of hourly variable costs alone on a 438 hour estimate. Unnecessary flights means unnecessary cycles and increased maintenance and inspections (there are several frequent inspection ADs and SBs on the Cl-600-XXXX family of planes).
The Conservative government runs on a platform of fiscal responsibility and is constantly going on about tough economic times and regular Canadians tightening their belts. I fail to see how using SAR Cormorant helicopters to leave a fishing camp or CC-144s to travel on vacation to the Bahamas fits into their proposed image.
At the least, it’s terrible PR. At worst…well, while this is somewhat small potatoes, they are still potatoes that belong to someone else and they are assholes for abusing that. I HATE the attitudes that some Conservative defenders - including MacKay - have taken that “everyone else has done it” or “it’s so trivial, why talk about it” - it’s still an abuse of power and they still deserve to be called on it.