Stephen Harper Lives Like a King While Peter Zimonjic Becomes Another Court Jester

There was the strangest story in my paper yesterday, written by someone I'd never heard of.

And while I say strange, I mean it was an apparent fabrication, suggesting to Canadians that Stephen Harper was a frugal traveller.

So I pulled out my Orwellian dictionary and sure enough doublespeak for frugal is wasteful, so was Peter Simonjic trying to send us a secret message that Stephen Harper is the most expensive prime minister we've ever had?

I thought that for a brief second, but then remembered. It's SUN media. They get paid to make stuff up.

Now I'm not suggesting that Zimonjic didn't carefully research the piece, making sure that the press release he received from the PMO contained no spelling errors, but if he'd just spent, oh, I don't know; about a minute and a half, with a google search bar, he would know that how much he spent on hotel rooms is the least of the expenses incurred by 'Mr. I want to be a U.S. president'.

He travels with a full motorcade. There is a video on Youtube that shows while he was visiting a small town to make an announcement at their local hall, there were more cars in his procession than there were in the whole bloody town.

He spent more than one hundred thousand dollars to stage an announcement in Chatham, that could have been presented in the House for free, especially since the Parliamentary budget officer was quick to report that the announcement was a work of fiction.

$108,000 of taxpayer money so he could lie to us. Now that's money well spent.

Obviously Peter has never been to a photo-op, where he would have been manhandled by the RCMP if he committed the mortal sin of asking our elected representative a question. OUR RCMP. Paid for by US, are now running interference with the media.

Or he hasn't witnessed how much expensive choreography goes into staging those photo-ops.

When Harper visited Canada’s arctic and was transported to the HMCS Toronto by helicopter for those ridiculous shots of him in an orange jumpsuit with a Star Wars helmet, the Nunavut’s Newspaper called it “The most expensive photo op you’ll ever see.”

Not sure it's the most expensive, given some of his others, but it's certainly up there.

He keeps 27 communications staff, many of whom travel with him. 27! Communications staff. He doesn't communicate!

So Mr Zimonjic, next time you write up this kind of nonsense, do a little digging. Who knows, maybe when you grow up you'll get to be a journalist.

But if not, I'm sure the SUN has kept your old paper route.

IS THIS REALLY CONSERVATIVE? IS THIS REALLY YOUR CANADA?