When I heard yesterday that the provincial government paid to send newspaper journalists to France with the Premier recently that provided clarity to something that had been bothering me about that trip.
In the past – you have to go back to before the current government – our local newspapers could get quite testy about these political trips calling them junkets and questioning their merit. The headlines coming out of France were absolutely glowing and I didn’t hear even a hint of questioning the value of spending tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayers money to send politicians, government officials (and now we find out the media) to Paris.
They say that the trip was a great success. Well, as I have pointed out elsewhere, I can’t find one nickel of business investment from France into New Brunswick in the past decade.
It may be time for the media to begin to question these trips. To follow up after six months and investigate how many new economic deals have been done. To critically assess these trips in an unbiased way.
..but then, they may not get their freebies….