Sask. NDP blasts premier’s travel preparation

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The party also revealed the two staffers make $116,000 and $161,000 per year.

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“You do not need to send highly-paid individuals months in advance with a light agenda to sort this out,” said NDP Leader Cam Broten.

He claims these advance trips involved touring luxury hotels where management there would be asked for a complimentary upgrade for Wall and to have a hotel employee be assigned to the premier’s entourage 24-7. Broten said they’d ask about menus, seating arrangements and transportation while spending little time meeting with the officials and corporations Wall planned to meet with.

“The type of things being sorted out could be handled through email, through phone, through Skype, through contacting the Canadian embassy, through the internet.”

But Wall clarified that the two public servants aren’t just tasked with taking trips and disagreed with the term of “travel scouts”. He admitted he doesn’t specifically know what kinds of questions they ask as they prepare, conceding that while logistics are part of their duties, they have a number of other responsibilities.

He defended the reasoning behind those trips.

“When they’re there in the markets ahead of a trip, they’re meeting with the companies. They’re not just checking hotels,” he insisted.

“We want to meet with the companies ahead of time, make sure that the interest of the province would be advanced, make sure the meetings that we’re conducting are actually needed and that’s what they do.”

The two individuals are sent ahead of his visit to help manage costs and to make sure the trip is even needed in the first place, Wall said. They’ve even scaled back previous engagements because the value simply wasn’t there.

“We’ve actually changed the mission. We’ve said, well we don’t really need, based on their advance work, we don’t need to do this meeting. Sometimes we can shorten the mission, save dollars that way.”

Wall said his government is taking fewer trips than the previous NDP government used to, and the Sask. Party is seeing more deals being inked, citing uranium and potash agreements with India and Asia. He also pointed out how a number of other provinces send staffers to do the same advance missions, including the NDP in Manitoba.

While Wall states his government is spending much less on travel than the opposition in years past, the NDP disputes that, arguing the comparison is not being done apples to apples.

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