Global Affairs Canada splurged half a million on decorative art

Global Affairs Canada used taxpayer money to purchase over half a million dollars of art over the last two years – but not for the Canadian public to see, as the pieces were bought for display at...

Source: Global Affairs Canada

Author: Quinn Patrick

Global Affairs Canada used taxpayer money to purchase over half a million dollars of art over the last two years – but not for the Canadian public to see, as the pieces were bought for display at “embassies, high commissions, consulates and official residences.”

Taxpayers were billed for things like a $9,900 “Lego block” set, which the GAC described as “mixed media.”

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation obtained the spending records through an access-to-information request which revealed that GAC bought a total of 158 art pieces in 2023 and 2024 amounting to $527,000 in expenditures.

The CTF indicated that many of these purchases were made at the end of both fiscal years, which annually conclude on Mar. 31 in a government splurging frenzy known as “March Madness.”

“Every March, taxpayers are forced to watch a bad episode of bureaucrats gone wild,” said CTF federal director Franco Terrazzano. “Taxpayers need the government to fully open up the books, go line by line through each department’s spending and take a chainsaw to all this waste.”

For example, the GAC spent $160,00 on artwork–including 32 pieces–on March 31, 2023.

Among the last-minute purchases were a $25,000 “archival pigment print photograph,” a $20,000 piece of fabric art made out of “poly-cotton, canvas, steel hanging rod” and a $3,500 piece made from “cowhide, dyed fox fur, Swarovski crystals, caribou hair and 24K gold.”

Another fabric art piece was purchased for $8,500, made of “home-tanned moose hide, cross fox fur, canvas, trim, seed beads, 24K gold beads [and] nylon thread,” along with a $6,000 oil painting.

“If you want proof that government bureaucrats have way too many tax dollars on their hands, look no further than Global Affairs Canada’s half-a-million dollar March Madness art spending spree,” said Terrazzano. “It’s supremely disrespectful to taxpayers to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on art they’ll never see in far-flung embassies.”

However, the 2023 spending spree was not an isolated event. GAC bureaucrats dropped $291,000 on 71 pieces of artwork in a single day last February.

Last year’s March Madness spending took place during a time when Food Banks Canada reported a record-breaking two million visits by hungry Canadians over that period.

The newly unearthed expenditures are separate from federal departments and agencies’ art rentals, which allow them to display artwork in their offices. That program has cost taxpayers $7,808,827 from Jan. 2016 to July 2024.

That figure translated to an average of $76,000 per month on art rentals since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took office.

Records show that federal departments and agencies rented a total of 1,445 artworks from the Art Bank over that period.

The government first purchases artwork from the Canada Council for the Arts’ Art Bank, which bureaucrats then rent as office decoration – all adding up to millions, paid for by taxpayers.

According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian made less than $70,000 in 2023, not even enough to cover a single month’s worth of government art rentals.

“From sex toy shows to lesbian pirate musicals to a $9,900 Lego set, Global Affairs Canada may be the worst waste offender in the entire federal government,” Terrazzano said. “And that’s saying a lot.”

Terrazanno was referring to when the GAC spent $8,800 on a sex toy show in Germany and $1,700 on a musical entitled “Lesbian Pirates!”

It’s also worth noting that GAC spent over $3.3 million on alcohol between Jan. 2019 and May 2024.

The CTF tallied that the department spent an average of $51,000 per month on beer, wine and spirits over that period in a report released last fall.

“The price of booze went up when Ottawa increased alcohol taxes, but that’s not a good excuse for these runaway bills,” said Terrazzano at the time. “I like to party as much as the next guy, but maybe these bureaucrats could chill it on the cold ones when the government is more than $1 trillion in debt and taxpayers are struggling.”