OTTAWA - Long before the media caught on to just how much money the Liberals threw around in Paris at the climate change conference last fall, government bureaucrats had already set up a deflection for their new Liberal bosses: tell everyone Stephen Harper spent more.

Briefing notes for Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion, obtained by the Sun, show the Liberals dug up Harper's bills when he attended his only UN climate change conference in 2009 in Copenhagen and planned to use them to excuse their own spending.

Harper headed to that conference with a 38-member delegation and spent a total of $408,806.31 in travel, meals, and hotel bills, Dion's bureaucrats wrote for him in a briefing note he could read in Parliament.

Trudeau, they noted, had a bigger delegation -- 45 people -- but he spent less for his few days in Paris. The interim bill for the Trudeau delegation's travel, room rental, food, beverages and telecommunications is $310,645.87.

The same briefing note says the interim bill as of last January, for the full 155-person Canadian delegation, including Trudeau's team, was going to cost nearly $1 million.

Dion's department was asked two weeks ago to provide final numbers for the Paris delegation as well as comparable numbers for any other prime ministerial delegations to these annual United Nations climate change conferences but the department has not, so far, been able to respond.

The Liberals have been on the hot seat all week for questionable expenses, including Environment Minister Catherine McKenna's $6,000 bill for a hired photographer to take pictures of her during her Parisian stay. The Sun also found a trio of Environment Canada bureaucrats spent more than $12,000 on food during the trip.

And this was days after Health Minister Jane Philpott said she would repay $3,700 in high-end car rides after it was revealed she billed for $1,700 on one day and more than $1,900 on another day for visits to the Toronto area.