caution. I am writing this column to avoid any demagoguery that leads many citizens to denounce politicians’ trips abroad, especially with regard to francophones and culture.
• Also read – Over $275,000 for Eight Trips: Politicians Under the Hot Tahiti Sun
Francophone is close to my heart. Mais j’avoue que les critiques formulées au fil des ans sur les dérapages politiques et financiers de l’Organisation de la Francophonie, dont le social siège est in Paris, m’ont obligée à poser un regard more sévère sur toutes les institutions reliées à Francophone.
How, for example, can the Association of Francophone Parliamentarians (APF) justify in these troubled and troubling times offering its members business-class flights from Canada and Quebec to Tahiti where the vulnerability and beauty of language invites you to relax rather than work?
tourists
Newspaper He published a report on Monday of eight trips our MPs have taken since restrictions ended due to the pandemic. Elected officials in Quebec and Canada were able to visit Tahiti, Luxembourg, Edmonton, Paris, Brussels and Kigali in 2022 and again this past January to Tahiti. The total cost of these trips in 2022 was $276,634. The estimated cost of the trip to Tahiti at the beginning of this year will be $105,000.
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Parliamentarians who have benefited from it will say that it is not a sea we drink. But these “seminars” organized above all for the comfort and pleasure of the participants during encounters between francophones are not only annoying, but they give off a smell of scandal.
Moreover, even in France, where politicians are not traditionally in the habit of looking at expenses, the media and some participants in the Asia-Pacific Forum questioned the importance of such activities, going so far as to project doubt on the usefulness of the association.
In Tahiti, the opposition Polynesia Party vehemently denounced the exorbitant expenses seen by the locals. For his part, Belgian MP Jean-Paul Wall said: “There are meetings in which I wondered what I was doing there.” In other words, Europeans are taking a closer look at these trips, and they are almost an excuse to reward elected officials.
Justification
The deputy of the Quebec bloc, Rene Fillmore, member of the Canadian delegation, specializing in ethical problems, let us specify, was present in Kigali, in Africa, and in Tahiti. He believes that parliamentary diplomacy is essential because it allows for the exchange of information and expertise and ensures Quebec’s place in the global Francophonie. However, words are never innocent!
In the current global political climate, meetings like the one in Tahiti with portraits of parliamentarians, flower necklaces around their necks and colorful Polynesian shirts to add to the local color suggest that cheerfulness and relaxation preside over these activities. More fun than serious. .
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Which Quebec and Canadian participants can personally afford to stay at the InterContinental Tahiti Luxury Resort?
And all those noisy tourist excursions. And swim in the clear waters of the atolls.
The Francophonie is not a windsurfing board or a tourist agency reserved for parliamentarians gifted more at seducing those who call upon them than debating agonizing questions about our collective future for hours in the National Assembly.
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