Juno News - August 24, 2026


Trudeau travels the world at Canada’s expense


Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

177.34

Word count

3,156

Sentence count

120


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Well, if you thought Justin Trudeau stopped costing Canadians taxpayers money after he
00:00:10.440 left office, you can think again. Canadians are picking up a hefty tab for RCMP security.
00:00:17.000 Costs are likely to be in the millions of dollars. When he was Prime Minister,
00:00:21.080 security costs peaked at over $32 million a year. Québécois Media is reporting the former
00:00:27.780 Prime Minister still maintains a security detail of three or four RCMP officers who travel with
00:00:34.180 him. Since he left office, he's been to Davos, Saint-Tropez, San Francisco, among other locations.
00:00:40.640 His personal trips with family have included locations in Italy and Switzerland.
00:00:46.340 When you add up the costs of travel to salaries, meals, accommodations, and overtime for his
00:00:52.860 security team, things get very expensive indeed. Then there's the complications of his ongoing
00:00:58.520 relationship with pop star Katy Perry and the viral videos posted of their antics, including
00:01:05.380 this one. Our guest today is security expert Ross McLean, former law enforcement and bodyguard to
00:01:26.360 the billionaires. Welcome, Ross. Hey, good to be with you. Glad to talk to you about these issues
00:01:31.180 today, Mark. Let's get into this. Yeah, well, considering the cost to taxpayers of his security
00:01:36.600 detail and how, well, let's face it, inconsequential Justin Trudeau is, would there be much of a
00:01:43.960 security threat around Justin Trudeau that he should be concerned and need this kind of level
00:01:49.960 of security? Well, that's the question really to be answered here, actually, Mark, because I used
00:01:57.260 to do, as you know, I was in the world of close protection. I have protected the royal family
00:02:02.260 before. I have protected internationally protected people before. And I've also done it on the private
00:02:07.340 side. And the RCMP is under no obligation, actually, to offer any protection to Justin
00:02:14.600 on a you-must-do-it basis. It's supposed to be on a case-by-case assessment of the threat value
00:02:21.240 against him and what it is. So they're not obligated to do it. Many prime ministers in the
00:02:25.900 past formers have turned it down, or they only use it on special occasions. If they're going somewhere
00:02:31.580 as an ex-prime minister to a conference somewhere, they might ask for that to invoke it. Or if the
00:02:38.220 government asks them to go somewhere, they might invoke having the extra protection. But just to
00:02:43.800 have it put on regardless, this could be actually a massive cost based on what they're doing to the
00:02:51.480 taxpayers could be massive mark yeah well i suggest that it's in the millions i mean when
00:02:57.660 he was prime minister i think it peaked at over 32 million dollars per year and now if he's got
00:03:04.740 three or four people around him on these trips i mean you've got to pay for their travel their
00:03:11.040 meals their overtime their salaries obviously and so that's you know we're running into some
00:03:18.000 serious money at this point do you think it's likely that trudeau asked for this a level of
00:03:24.000 security or was it offered to him by the rcmp all right well the rcmp is technically they're
00:03:31.040 supposed to go based on the threat assessment that they do to him and the threat assessment
00:03:35.920 could be look one time we had a uh a sort of a distant member of the royal family if you're in
00:03:41.840 the royal family you go so far out and you get protection and you go a little farther you're
00:03:46.960 kind of on your own right so there was a more distant member of the royal family who came over
00:03:51.200 to canada and i got a call i was working privately at the time saying hey can you please provide
00:03:55.680 security for this person i said hold on that's they're the royal family like what are you asking
00:04:00.240 me to do it for they don't know they're just outside of it so we're gonna we're gonna pay
00:04:04.560 you for it if you can take it on to do it outside so there's that sort of a consideration the next
00:04:09.760 consideration though mark is how big a team do you use right if you're on a trip 24 7 you just
00:04:16.400 can't have one person covering you 24 7 everywhere you go there's shifts i mean a full a full bodyguard
00:04:24.080 contingent could be seven people right seven people double time over time all the time all
00:04:31.120 expenses all the places everywhere you go that adds up so the question would be is there really
00:04:36.720 that level of threat against the prime minister do they have people phoning them in do they have
00:04:42.160 letters like what's going on not to mention his girlfriend katie perry i'm sure she's got private
00:04:49.360 security around her so there already is a level of security that's there so how much of this is
00:04:56.000 feeding at the trough and feeding the ego i mean that's for the rcmp to answer we know that they
00:05:01.360 don't like to answer questions though mark they don't like to answer these sort of questions
00:05:05.600 they should be straightforward answers they make a a great point about the ego because of course
00:05:11.280 he's no longer prime minister and you know when you're basically a narcissist you want to still
00:05:17.600 feel like you're important and well it makes you feel important when you've got people around you
00:05:22.960 whose job it is to protect you and unfortunately we're getting a big fat bill we don't know how
00:05:28.960 big that bill is but we hope to find out at some point i mean i doubt that stephen harper has ever
00:05:34.880 had this level of security since he left office. I just don't think that's necessary in his part
00:05:43.300 or that previous prime ministers, you know, Kretien, for instance, Mulroney's gone.
00:05:49.900 Let me tell you. Let me tell you about Stephen Harper. Sure. I recently protected him at an
00:05:55.260 event. He was at an event that I was doing protection at. Now, it was a fairly high-profile,
00:06:00.560 high-risk event because of some of the other attendees there also had their inner they were
00:06:06.120 internationally protected people high ranking levels of an outside government that came
00:06:11.060 and uh mr harper was coming and he did have two mounties assigned to him for coming to it
00:06:18.440 but but that is reasonable right that was reasonable uh for doing that so he uh if if
00:06:25.960 the threat is right and it's public enough, fine. And if it's a high risk event, that was a high
00:06:31.020 risk event. So, but I don't see Trudeau doing that. I see him, I don't know, running around
00:06:35.940 San Tropez or wherever else he is doing. I'm not sure. Maybe the threat is more from sunburn or
00:06:40.820 something. I don't know. Well, crime is up. Repeat offenders are released on bail. Police responses
00:06:47.440 are slower than ever. And in many places, law-abiding citizens are expected to just hope
00:06:53.900 nothing bad happens. That's not good enough. And that's exactly where Berna comes in. Berna
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00:07:06.520 You don't need a firearms license. You don't need a background check. There's no waiting period.
00:07:12.200 There's no permanent life-altering consequences if you're forced into the situation where you
00:07:17.780 have to defend yourself. And right now, Berna is having their biggest sale ever. 25% off everything
00:07:25.460 this week only. Use the link in the description or visit junomarketplace.com slash Berna for
00:07:33.420 special offers. Make sure that you're prepared. It's better to be safe than sorry. Yeah, I was
00:07:40.940 going to ask you as well about the Katy Perry factor. I mean, here you have a pop star, very
00:07:45.900 well-known who to your point probably has her own security but they post videos very public they're
00:07:52.300 very much out there i mean from the perspective of a security person an expert like yourself
00:07:58.920 how does that complicate matters well there's a question of whether it complicates or not the
00:08:06.000 other one we go back to ego a little bit right so much of the protection i did privately was for
00:08:11.580 billionaires. And what a real billionaire does, they don't want to have a whole lot of muscle
00:08:16.720 around them because it makes them look weak. They don't like saying, hey, I got to have all
00:08:22.380 this security just so I can walk. It makes them look weak. So it's very much low profile. You're
00:08:28.000 in a suit. You'd be dressed the same as anybody else. It's low profile. When you move to celebrities,
00:08:33.760 that's a whole different style of bodyguards. They like to have the big monster man standing
00:08:38.960 there next to him it looks like he could you know pick up a car and throw it across the street they
00:08:43.440 like to have thug looking people walking around like you come near me we're going to clean you up
00:08:48.320 they actually use that as part of their celebrity for pushing it so they make sure they get noticed
00:08:55.200 right they use that to get noticed the true people who are under threat who are billionaires and
00:09:00.800 people who are under threat you're low-key you're low-key that's how you do it you don't come through
00:09:07.120 in a purple Rolls Royce with a marching band in front of you.
00:09:10.920 You're in a low-key expedition or something like that.
00:09:16.040 You're not in a, you know, like, say, the big Escalade.
00:09:18.020 So the question really needs to be, this is on the RCMP for approving these expenses.
00:09:23.220 And I'd love to see them be more responsive on these issues as to what it is.
00:09:27.520 Because if he, they're low.
00:09:29.420 The RCMP are low on people.
00:09:31.120 We have terrorism events going on right now in Toronto.
00:09:33.820 We've got the U.S. consulate being shot up in Toronto.
00:09:36.620 The U.S. consulate being threatened with a guy who's going to bomb it out on the east coast on Halifax.
00:09:41.580 We've got shoot-for-hire people going on in here who are shooting at synagogues and going at people.
00:09:46.480 Now, the RCMP are involved in those investigations.
00:09:49.900 How many people have they got off doing that?
00:09:53.620 And these would be quite qualified people, I imagine.
00:09:56.860 Yeah, it'd be a lot cheaper just to give them a baseball cap so that nobody recognizes him.
00:10:02.940 rather than spending i mean god knows how much money we're throwing at this guy and it's
00:10:09.400 interesting as well you compare him to other even better known celebrities you know the keanu reeves
00:10:15.180 of the world who will ride the subway you know and and not draw attention to themselves with an
00:10:21.500 entourage of beefy bodyguards and he seems to be fine you know you just kind of walk around maybe
00:10:29.640 you put a baseball cap. I mean, people just sort of leave you alone. And the fact that you think
00:10:35.720 you deserve this kind of attention by guards sends the message that, look how important I am,
00:10:43.080 you know, that I require this level of security. But I'm just, do you have any idea how expensive
00:10:49.820 this would be? I mean, I know you don't know, and I don't know yet, but you're talking about three,
00:10:54.820 possibly four people according to kebacore media travel traveling with him you know to
00:11:01.240 places like saint tropez uh on personal trips for instance with his family to italy and switzerland
00:11:08.740 i mean this is going to be very expensive i mean if you were giving you were handing the bill to
00:11:15.680 the government of canada to the people of canada how big would that bill be any idea at all well
00:11:21.140 if i was billing okay the government of canada and they're paying for me it would be like carny
00:11:25.700 bill billing for his peanut butter sandwiches on his plane i would bill i would bill through that's
00:11:30.420 a fifteen hundred dollar peanut butter sandwich right but i mean but i mean realistically a good
00:11:36.660 close protection professional minimum is around 150 bucks an hour minimum 150 bucks an hour but
00:11:44.580 you're looking at doubling that right because they're on overtime and you're working extra time
00:11:49.140 and then there's travel. Then you have per diems. And like I say, how many people are there? And are
00:11:54.780 you cycling them in and out? Does someone have to be away from their family and their home
00:11:58.660 for three months while he tours Europe? Or do you cycle people in and out? You need advanced people,
00:12:04.920 you need people to walk with you, you need people to respond in the middle of the night,
00:12:08.640 just in case something happens in the middle of the night. The cost, trust me, there was one
00:12:13.860 billionaire in particular that we used to do close protection for they had outstanding threats
00:12:19.200 because of how wealthy they were they were from another country right so the people in the other
00:12:25.600 country were always had a threat out against them uh he he did not like he was part of a public
00:12:32.400 company at the time and he did not like how big the bill was to have to protect him which was
00:12:37.980 necessary and reasonable because he thought this is shareholders money right because the shareholders
00:12:43.280 were actually paying for it. And he would find ways to try and shift it away from the company
00:12:47.960 because he did not want to be seen taking advantage of the company that way. And it's
00:12:54.380 expensive. It's expensive for billionaires to have a full, really qualified team of security
00:13:02.780 professionals. You'd have seven on a team, eight-hour shifts, boom, 21 people, right? Or you
00:13:10.380 cycle them on, you cycle them off. It's big money. And how long do you do it for? I mean,
00:13:17.040 maybe you could provide this for a little while, you know, but it's been, what, a year and a half
00:13:22.880 since he left office or was pushed out, however they did it. And I mean, are we still going to
00:13:30.860 be picking up this massive tab three, four years down the road? I mean, how does the government
00:13:36.600 justify that well i think they need to and like i say the resources the scarce resources of the
00:13:42.760 police and particularly those qualified people we've got irgc terrorists running around this
00:13:48.320 country and other people and you need qualified close protection people to help hunt them down
00:13:53.260 to protect people from them uh and and as you say it costs a lot of money we i remember one time
00:13:58.600 back in the day we had a quote for a guy who was testifying against the mob and he had a fair bit
00:14:04.660 of money and they wanted us to put a close protection team together for him now we really
00:14:10.160 didn't do that type of business we didn't want to do it we're not into protecting people from the
00:14:14.080 mob not because we don't want to protect people but that's mob related where's the money all
00:14:19.940 coming from paying for us to be the protection and everything else right it's a little it's a
00:14:24.800 little cloudy and we just told the guy look we don't see how you can afford this your trial is
00:14:29.180 going to last like a year and a half or whatever it is you got enough money you won't be able to
00:14:33.060 cover a month worth of this worth of these bills right so we ended up declining on that so the
00:14:38.600 government really has to look at that and decide where are we going to spend these resources are
00:14:43.780 we going to put them there or is it just it doesn't matter like a thousand dollar peanut
00:14:48.260 butter and jam sandwich for carny let the other people eat cake i'm important i need to have a
00:14:55.060 i need to have a pile of security around me and like i say they're really big really good people
00:15:00.040 they don't really want it around them they have they do it because they need to do it and they
00:15:04.640 want it low profile yeah i mean from a security expert's perspective this would be a pretty sweet
00:15:10.520 gig i would think you're making terrific money you're getting to travel to all these exotic
00:15:16.420 locations and it can't be very hard i mean we're not talking about trump here or somebody who is
00:15:23.460 actually important that has actually been the target of assassination attempts. I mean, there
00:15:29.780 have been threats made against Trudeau when he was in office, I believe. I think there may have
00:15:35.620 been one guy tried to, I think, drive his car through the gate. There was that episode. I mean,
00:15:43.540 he never got close to Trudeau. But I mean, in this case, what do you think? I mean, I would think
00:15:50.240 that most people would jump at a gig like this one? So I once did a contract gig for the
00:15:56.520 government. There was a major strike going on with a union that was known for causing trouble
00:16:03.280 from time to time, shall we say. And there was a pile of properties that needed to be looked after,
00:16:07.840 protected and managed and all that. So they hired me at what I thought was an ungodly hourly rate
00:16:13.200 at the time to do the job. And then everything after eight hours, they paid me a double time
00:16:20.160 to 12 hours and it went to triple time and they were happy me with me working seven days a week
00:16:26.420 24 hours a day driving from site to site sleeping at some places where i'm at and i you build for
00:16:33.240 the whole thing so they can be pretty sweet deals yeah uh when when you're doing it well right
00:16:39.480 they're providing the meals they're providing accommodations and if they're staying in really
00:16:44.720 nice hotels you're probably staying in the same hotel as they are i mean i'm not saying it's a
00:16:49.420 vacation. I'm just saying it's kind of a sweet gig. How do people follow you online and find
00:16:56.600 where you are on YouTube? And they can catch me at McLean Chronicles on YouTube. And as I talked
00:17:03.360 to you before we went on air, I actually just did a video about the protection of President Trump
00:17:08.280 when they did the plane switch out of Turkey. And the regular mainstream media had a meltdown over
00:17:14.400 that. And I go into a bit of the descriptions about how you actually do assess threats when
00:17:19.200 you change them, when you heighten security, which is a good follow-on to the discussion we
00:17:23.560 just had here. So people can find me over there at McLean Chronicles on YouTube.
00:17:28.500 Thank you so much for coming on the show, Ross. We appreciate it as always.
00:17:31.960 Thank you, Mark.
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00:17:45.800 Thank you so much for tuning in.
00:17:46.960 We'll see you next time.