Manitoba Resumes Posting Ministers’ Travel Costs, but Staff Spending Remains Hidden

The Manitoba government has resumed posting out-of-province travel expenses for cabinet ministers after a gap of more than a year, but questions about transparency remain as the disclosures continue to exclude the costs of accompanying political and departmental staff.

Newly posted records show that Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine claimed $6,649 for a five-day trip to New York City from March 10 to 15, covering airfare, accommodation and meals. However, documents obtained by The Canadian Press through Manitoba’s freedom of information law reveal the overall cost of the trip was significantly higher.

According to those records, the province also paid travel expenses for Fontaine’s director of ministerial affairs and two staff members from Gender Equity Manitoba, a branch of the Families department. The total bill for all four travellers came to $23,105. More than half of that amount was spent on hotel rooms, with the remainder covering flights, ground transportation, meals and unspecified “incidentals.”

The group travelled to New York to attend the annual conference of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women; a global forum focused on gender equality and women’s rights.

A similar situation applies to the premier’s office. Recently released information shows that Wab Kinew claimed $1,684 in travel expenses for a March trip to Toronto, where he delivered a speech to the Economic Club of Canada and attended an international mining conference. As with other postings, the disclosure does not include the travel costs of senior political staff who accompanied the premier.

The lack of staff expense reporting has drawn criticism from the opposition. Wayne Ewasko, interim leader of the Progressive Conservatives, said it may be time to change long-standing practice and publish staff travel costs alongside those of ministers.

“It probably wouldn’t hurt to take a look at what the policies are and the limits and those type of things,” Ewasko said in an interview. He added that broader disclosure would give taxpayers clearer insight into what public money is achieving when ministers, premiers and their staff travel outside the province.

Until this week, Manitoba’s online disclosures for out-of-province travel expenses only covered the period up to March 31, 2023. The gap became a political flashpoint, with the Progressive Conservatives who governed until their defeat in last October’s provincial election and the governing New Democrats trading accusations over who was responsible for withholding the information.

Kinew told reporters on Tuesday that he had instructed officials to post more recent expense records, which appeared online shortly afterward. While the renewed postings mark a return to regular disclosure, calls are growing for the government to go further and include the full cost of travel, including expenses incurred by staff who accompany elected officials.