Follow-up: "Expenses out of line???"

Readers may remember a post from January 8th of this year entitled "Expenses out of line???" regarding the former chairman of the National Film Board of Canada, Jacques Bensimon (left).

In that post I questioned two expense claims listed for Bensimon on his disclosure website.

One was a trip he took to Paris:
http://www.onf.ca/publications/en/accountability/fichevoyage.php?annee=2006&num=23

It was, and is listed as a trip from May 14, 2006 to May 16, 2006.

What caught my attention was the accommodation expense of $1,355.61.

Assuming he checked in on May 14th and checked-out on May 16th, would have worked out to $677.81 CDN per night at some hotel.

Not being one to assume, I scraped together $5 and filed and Access to Information request with the National Film Board of Canada.

Here's what I got back. (Page 8 has the hotel details)

For starters, he checked-out on May 17th not May 16th, so it was three nights at the hotel instead of two.

But that still means he spent $451.87 CDN per night for a hotel room at the Hotel Westminster, a four-star hotel which appears to be towards the middle-to-high end of four-star Paris hotels.

Bensimon then jetted off to Cannes, where he stayed for 13 nights, at a cost of $6,721.61 CDN total or $517.05 CDN per night there. Perhaps I'll have to file another ATI request...

More on Bensimon later this week...