roaming charges, Alberta, wasted taxpayer dollars

Thomas Lukaszuk, the contender for the Progressive Conservative leadership in Alberta, is facing hot water for wasting taxpayer dollars on roaming charges that he incurred while he was on a personal trip overseas. When questioned about it Lukaszuk stated “When you travel as a minister, you pre-plan as much as you can. When something goes sideways in Alberta, all of a sudden you’re inundated with documents. We’re talking document packages are being sent to you by data transfers. So when I came back, I dealt with executive council and I said, ‘Guys, we’re not paying this bill. Negotiate it. Bring it down because this is ridiculous,’ and they negotiated with the service provider but they couldn’t bring it down.” Lukszuk refuses to consider paying the bill himself and reimbursing the government for the roaming charges because he said i”It’s the unfortunate cost of doing business. The fact is, it was unavoidable.”

The roaming charges in question that are the root of the scandal concerning wasting taxpayer dollars. While Thomas Lukaszuk was on a personal trip to Israel and Poland in 2012 the government was billed $20,243.91 for roaming charges because Lukaszuk used 2.19 gigabytes of data while he was abroad on the trip. The reason for the trip was an invitation from the Simon Weisenthal Centre to meet with a survivor of Auschwitz. Lukaszuk defends his use of the roaming charges explaining that a large number of documents, both legal and government, were exchanged with others while we was in these two countries. The taxpayers may see it differently during the next election cycle.