Trudeau Liberals seek to block prime minister's flights from being tracked

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's personal flight schedule has gotten the PM in trouble more than once for proving he's lied about his whereabouts on his public schedule, and now, the Canadian military says it’s exploring ways to add a layer of secrecy to the movement of flights that carry Trudeau.

The Royal Canadian Air Force says it's investigating how it might prevent the real-time tracking of Canadian Armed Forces flights, The Globe and Mail reports.

One option would ensure that flight-tracking websites, which sell their services for a fee, are unable to display the movement of some Canadian military planes.

Last year, Trudeau's flight logs revealed he skipped Canada's first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, despite being invited to the residential school in Kamloops where 215 unmarked graves were found. He instead stopped in Tofino, British Columbia to go surfing.

Trudeau's itinerary for the day showed that he would be in Ottawa for "Private meetings," with no mention of travel to British Columbia.

But the Toronto Sun's Bryan Passifiume found the PM's public flights logs and reported Trudeau was travelled to the west coast.

According the Tk’emlúps Te Secwépemc First Nation at the time, the prime minister was invited on two occasions to join "survivors and their families" in Kamloops, where 215 bodies were discovered in May of this year.

The PMO eventually updated Trudeau's schedule to accurately reflect where he is.

The matter came to light after the US Federal Aviation Administration discussed a Canadian request to block call signs in a July 14 e-mail to aviation stakeholders with an interest in the agency’s Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed program, which allows aircraft owners to block or limit the dissemination of flight data.

The letter lists call signs that Canada wanted blocked from real-time flight tracking, including call signs CANFORCE 1 to CANFORCE 9999.

If the military does end up obscuring the real-time movements of some flights, the information on this air traffic would still be publicly available later. Passenger manifests could be obtained by access-to-information requests, Daniel Le Bouthillier, head of media relations for the Department of National Defence, told The Globe.

The US government has taken steps to obscure tracking of Air Force One, the plane that carries the President.