Parliament spent nearly $600,000 on luxury hotel rooms it didn’t use when nearly half of the listed delegates for a conference of European parliamentarians it hosted either didn’t show up or chose less expensive hotels.
Parliament expected 700 delegates to attend the annual meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly, which took place in Vancouver from June 30 to July 4. The conference is usually held in Europe, where most of its members are based .
Only 365 delegates ended up attending, and not all of them stayed at the government selected hotels. That left taxpayers on the hook for 1,400 overnight stays worth $596,000 in total — an average of $425 a night.
Audio-visual costs for the conference were also higher than expected, contributing to the event going $649,000 over the original budget of $1.8 million.
Sen. Elizabeth Marshall, former auditor general for Newfoundland and Labrador, questioned why the conference cost so much.
Liberal MP Hedy Fry, head of the Canadian delegation to the OSCE AP conference last summer, describes what was accomplished during the conference.
“It is
