OTTAWA—The Conservative cost-cutting agenda has spilled more blood as the defence minister was alleged to have used a military aircraft to pick him up from a fancy Newfoundland fishing lodge.

After the Tories abandoned Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Walt Natynczyk earlier this week to explain why he used a Challenger jet to catch up to a family vacation in the Caribbean, Defence Minister Peter MacKay was targeted for retribution.

Citing a military source, CTV News reported Wednesday night that MacKay’s office ordered one of three Cormorant search-and-rescue helicopters to pick him up from a salmon-fishing lodge on Newfoundland’s Gander River in July 2010.

The choppers are on round-the-clock standby at CFB Gander, ready to perform offshore rescues or to respond to distress calls around the province and in northeastern Quebec.

MacKay said in the House of Commons that he was on a four-day fishing trip with friends but had to cut it short to attend a government news conference. The decision was made then to schedule a quick demonstration of the aircraft’s capabilities.

The air force had been trying to put on the show for their minister for some three years as a way to demonstrate some of their particular equipment requirements. Sources said that MacKay was lifted on a hoist from the ground into the helicopter hovering overhead and then flown to CFB Gander.

From there, MacKay travelled to London, Ont., on July 9 to announce a $34.4-million project to upgrade the fleet of LAV-3 armoured vehicles.

“I think that as Minister of National Defence I should familiarize myself at every opportunity with the important work of those who perform these daily heroics,” MacKay said in response to opposition questions about the helicopter flight.

“Being picked up at a cost of $16,000 from a fishing camp is not the way to learn how search-and-rescue helicopters operate,” charged NDP defence critic Jack Harris, citing the approximate cost for what was a 30-minute flight.

Newfoundland NDP MP Ryan Cleary, a former journalist, had been critical of the search-and-rescue response times from Gander, but put in a request this summer to tour the base and fly in a Cormorant after the invitation of a senior official at the base.

On Thursday, he presented an email that MacKay’s office sent to him denying his request.

“Conducting such tours would undoubtedly detract from the high operational tempo of this important facility and aircraft, and thus limit the normal functioning of both, and that of its personnel,” said the July 28 message from Mervyn Frame, a senior special assistant to MacKay in Ottawa.

“He uses a Cormorant for a taxi, that’s just ridiculous. The minister is a hypocrite. He denies me and then he uses that Cormorant as his personal taxi,” Cleary said.

Cleary added in a blog posting Thursday that he had heard about MacKay’s helicopter trip from “personnel who work on the Gander base” but had been unable to confirm any details through flight logs.

The recent skirmishes over perks and personal use of government aircraft started last Friday with a report that Natcynzyk had racked up $1 million worth of travel on the fleet of Challenger jets since taking up his post in 2008.

The trip that got him into hot water was a flight to the island of St. Maarten in the Caribbean in January 2010. He took it after missing his scheduled departure to attend the repatriation of four Canadian soldiers and a journalist who had been killed in Afghanistan.

Rather than defend the man he had recently asked to continue on in the job for another year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he would be looking into the matter and that he expected officials who use government jets for personal travel to pay the costs out of their own pockets.

After meeting privately with the Prime Minister on Monday morning, a chastened Natynczyk said he would pay back the costs of the flight if he was found to have broken the rules.

It was MacKay, as Natynczyk’s political boss, who personally approved the Challenger flight.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

All of this has left officials in the senior ranks of the military and the government trying to determine the source for both of the reports and whether word of MacKay’s helicopter flight is perhaps payback for the government’s decision to publicly scold Canada’s top soldier.

Liberal Leader Bob Rae said he had no idea who or what was behind the leak of information damaging to the Tories, but he was delighted to see it coming.

“I think it’s just natural a citizen’s desire for the truth,” he said.