ADAMS: If we’re gutting foreign aid to save pennies, why are we still polishing Stornoway?

I saw a Facebook comment this week that made me want to flip the table over, but since we're adults and we're here to write, I'll settle for explaining the arithmetic and the architecture of this particular grift.

The comment was a response to a repost I made about Russia's ongoing cultural genocide in Ukraine—specifically the kidnapping of children and their forced adoption into Russian families. The commenter, a former friend with a terminal case of online brain rot, said the usual thing: “We shouldn't spend a dime on foreign aid while Canadians are homeless/unemployed/starving.”

On paper, this sounds like fiscal prudence. It's the political equivalent of saying you're going to pay off your credit card by canceling your Spotify subscription. It makes you feel like you're making a hard choice when, in reality, you're just ignoring the mortgage payment on the second house you don't think you should be paying for.

The linguistic trick here is to make you think Canada's international assistance is a bottomless slush fund, when that couldn't be further from the truth. In 2024, total federal expenses were $534.5 billion. Canada's entire envelope for international assistance—every grant, every humanitarian dollar, every cent spent on attempting to stabilize regions so they don't devolve into the kind of chaos that creates more refugees at our border—was $11.1 billion.

That is only 2.1% of total spending.

You know what's even more frivolous than 2% of the federal budget? The taxpayer-funded 9,500-square-foot mansion in Rockcliffe Park known as Stornoway.

We are told to get outraged about foreign aid—which, by the way, is a post-WWII insurance policy against Fascism 2.0—but we are supposed to remain silent about the fact that the Leader of the Opposition (the losing party) lives in a gated estate that costs the public a minimum of $170,000 a year just to maintain. Not to live in. To maintain. The heating bill for the garage alone is probably more than some families' annual grocery spend.

You cannot, with a straight face, tell me that the $28.92 per Canadian we spend to ensure Ukraine doesn't fall to a revanchist empire is the reason you can't afford gas, while simultaneously sleeping soundly knowing the guy who wants to be Prime Minister is getting his floors waxed on your dime.

This is what I like to call the “MANSIONGATE Fallacy.” It's the selective amnesia that grips the political right whenever a Conservative leader is involved. They'll screenshot Jagmeet Singh's pension accrual (which is, to be fair, a legitimate conversation about MP benefits), but they will never, ever demand that Pierre Poilievre give up Stornoway and rent a two-bedroom condo near Panchvati Supermarket like a normal MP.

The commenter in question had a meltdown on my page previously when I posted about enforcing the Canada Health Act. His response was, verbatim, “nobody cares about that,” followed by a rant about the price of gas.

This is the modern political right in a nutshell: I don't care about the structural integrity of the system unless the price at the pump changes by a nickel. He's worried about $1.60 a litre while turning a blind eye to a residence that costs more to operate annually than the median Canadian household earns in two years.

Here's the truth Pension Poilievre doesn't want you to hear: You can help Ukrainians defend their sovereignty and build houses for homeless Canadians. The government is not a household with a fixed cookie jar. It's a sovereign entity with the capacity to do both if the political will exists. But the political will doesn't exist because it's easier to scream about "foreigners" than it is to tax the massive, record-shattering profits of the oil and gas sector that are actually causing the high price of gas my former friend is so worried about.

And since we're doing either/or fallacies, let me play the game: I would rather have $20 per-person on foreign aid yearly than strap on a suit of body armour and go to war. See? It's easy. It's also stupid.

If we are serious about cutting “frivolous spending,” the first sacrifice must come from the political class. Sell Stornoway. Cap MP pensions before they hit six figures. Cut the travel budgets for the people who fly business class to tell us we can't afford to buy groceries.

You don't get to play the fiscal hawk while living in a gilded nest. And you don't get to lecture me about the cost of helping a child escape a war zone while you're sitting in a taxpayer-funded living room the size of a basketball court.

Start with the mansion. Then we can talk about the pocket change.

This piece is an archival work of the author, originally published elsewhere, and is presented here for historical record. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of the Provincial Times. Read our Content Policy here.