Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau’s Luxury Trips Are Funded by Canadian Taxpayers, New Report Suggests

Canadian taxpayers could be paying for Justin Trudeau‘s security as he jets to luxury destinations with pop star Katy Perry, according to a new report from Québec that has reignited scrutiny of the former prime minister’s travel and protection costs.

The coverage alleges that Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers have been accompanying Trudeau on recent trips abroad with Perry, raising questions over who is picking up the bill.

Trudeau, 54, left office in March last year but, like other former Canadian leaders, is still entitled to an RCMP protective detail if the force deems it necessary. Since confirming his relationship with Perry in December 2025, he has been photographed with the singer at Coachella and on breaks in Greece, Italy and Switzerland, a glossy itinerary that has inevitably sharpened the focus on his post‑politics lifestyle.

The Question of Who Pays

According to reporting in Le Journal de Montréal, RCMP officers accompanied Trudeau for at least part of his travels with Perry in Europe. The newspaper said the force declined to disclose how many officers were deployed, how long they stayed or how much the trips cost, citing security sensitivities.

In responses quoted by Le Journal, the RCMP said it could not share details of Trudeau’s protection because of ‘the evolving threat environment and operational and security considerations related to police protection services.’ It added that publishing specifics risked allowing outsiders to ‘reveal or facilitate inferences about the protective measures taken for an individual.’

The RCMP did not confirm whether taxpayers had covered any of the expenses attached to Trudeau’s travel with Perry. Yet the paper, citing its own sources, reported that Trudeau typically requires three or four federal officers at a time.

If those officers are publicly funded, that would mean the state pays for their flights, hotels, meals, salaries and overtime every time Trudeau joins Perry on tour or hops to another European hotspot.

One unnamed source went further, accusing Trudeau of effectively using the RCMP as a ‘private security agency’ for personal and political trips now that he is out of office.

What is clear is that the optics are awkward. A high‑profile former leader swanning around on luxury getaways with one of the world’s most recognisable pop stars while protected by federal officers paid out of the public purse is always going to land badly with some Canadians, regardless of the exact invoice.

Security Pressures and a ‘Hectic Love Life’

The reported Perry, Trudeau arrangements have also prompted concern from former senior law enforcement officials. Pierre‑Yves Bourduas, a former RCMP deputy commissioner, told Le Journal that Trudeau’s ‘hectic love life’ could create ‘headaches’ for the officers tasked with keeping him safe.

Bourduas noted that the RCMP already faces staffing pressures, and that maintaining a detail for a former prime minister who is regularly on the move adds to the strain on ‘limited personnel.’

Every officer deployed to shadow Trudeau on a private trip is one who cannot be assigned elsewhere, which is the kind of dry operational trade‑off that tends to irritate rank and file members as much as it does taxpayers.

Trudeau does have options, at least on paper. Perry, now in a very public relationship with him, travels with her own private bodyguards. They have previously intervened in what were described as concerning incidents during her concerts, according to the same coverage, and she is hardly short of resources.

Yet Bourduas argued that Trudeau cannot simply piggyback on Perry’s team. The singer’s security have ‘a different mandate than that of the former prime minister,’ he said, meaning their job is primarily to protect the artist, the show, and the brand.

They are not trained or authorised to make the kind of threat assessments or security decisions that state‑assigned officers routinely do for former heads of government.

So even if Perry’s guards are never far away, the Canadian state is likely to insist on keeping its own people close to Trudeau whenever he steps into a public space, whether that is a music festival in the desert or a yacht moored off a Greek island. The romance might be private, but the security implications are not.

All of this fuss over who pays is not emerging in a vacuum. The CBC previously reported that security for Trudeau while he was in office cost more than 30 million Canadian dollars, described as the highest total recorded for any Canadian leader. That figure, lodged in the public memory, gives fresh edge to any new suggestion that his protection remains particularly expensive.

As always with security spending, hard data are scarce and heavily redacted, which makes it easy for rumours to flourish and harder for the public to weigh risks against costs in a rational way.

Are the threats to a polarising former prime minister serious enough to justify three or four officers on every leg of every trip, even if he is mainly hanging out backstage at a Perry show? Officials, unsurprisingly, will not say.

Meanwhile, the relationship itself continues to generate its own headlines. The pair have offered occasional curated glimpses of their time together on social media, and Perry recently clashed with the White House over its use of one of her songs, underscoring how tightly politics and pop culture now intertwine. It is that blend, the former prime minister folded into the orbit of a global star, that makes this story land with such a thud.

On their own, famous people having bodyguards is nothing new. Nor is it shocking that a former national leader remains under some form of state protection. What grates is the suggestion that the two arrangements have merged, and that Canadian taxpayers might now be subsidising a very glamorous, very public love story that they never exactly signed up for.

Originally published on IBTimes UK