Politicians need to justify trade missions: expert

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A local expert is calling for better justification from politicians who go on trade missions using taxpayer money.

Doug McArthur is a public policy professor at SFU, he says when most of these politicians go on the trips, the work on developing agreements has already been done ahead of time. “The trouble with alot of them, they’re happening so frequently now that you really have to wonder what the benefit is of these ones that are pro forma visits with fancy banquets that aren’t really doing new business.”

He says it may be worthwhile for a premier to go once and awhile, but there needs to be more transparency. “Any kinds of reports we get will be all dressed up and fancied up and we won’t be able to tell what happened anyways.”

“Often it’s just going in and attending a lot of big dinners and going through the ceremony of signing and getting publicity out of it. I think it really gets overdone and I think we’re seeing too many of them,” he adds.

McArthur calls Surrey Mayor’s Dianne Watts recent trip to Israel “questionable.”

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