Using access to information requests,
Sun Media’s Ezra Levant was able to get some figures on how much it cost the John Abbott College to host Suzuki for a speech last year:
To give a one-hour talk, Suzuki billed them $30,000 plus expenses. Add in his airline ticket, his $841 hotel bill, a photographer and other costs, and the total hit for his visit was $41,640. From a small, publicly funded school.
But no one would be silly enough to say that Suzuki is in this for the money. Please! To even suggest that is crass. Maybe there’s some other reasons he was visiting the college.
Wait, what’s that?
Here is an exact quote from John Abbott College’s Mary Milburn, in an email obtained through access to information: “We have learned, via Dr. Suzuki’s assistant, that although the Dr. does not like to have bodyguards per se, he does not mind having a couple of ladies (females) that would act as bodyguards in order that he may travel from one venue to another without being accosted too many times along the way.”
Not just any ladies (female) would do, however. The college’s administration needed to interview suitable candidates, ones who would be “nicely dressed,” before selecting Suzuki’s lucky bodyguards. The reward for taking on such a dangerous task was well worth the trouble though, as revealed in another email.
“In terms of acknowledging their contribution after the tours are completed, we will need to gather them together at the end to either give them some brief time with Suzuki (which I will try to make happen, either by having him step out of the penthouse or enabling them to join the group in the sanctified air).”
Sanctified what now? OK, just go on up. The good doctor is waiting for you.
Of course, there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation why David Suzuki needs well-dressed female ladies to show him around a college that paid over $40,000 to host him, and why he would then reward those female ladies with a private audience in his hotel room.
After all, Ezra Levant is what we call an “unreliable narrator” so who knows what he’s leaving out.
Still, kind of strange for the school to have gone along with the whole Gaddafi thing without batting an eyelash.
the Albatross | David Suzuki needs some female ladies to see him in the penthouse
