Canada Spent More to Protect Prince Harry Than Any Other Visiting Dignitary - While He Was Secretly Dating Meghan in Toronto

Prince Harry at the 2017 Invictus Games opening ceremony. Credit: E. J. Hersom / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Canada’s national broadcaster spent six years filing freedom of information requests to obtain a single RCMP security document. When CBC News finally received it, the figures showed Prince Harry had cost Canadian taxpayers more money to protect than any internationally protected person who visited the country in a five-year window - including Barack Obama, and including his own father’s official 2017 tour.

The Six-Year Records Fight

CBC News pursued the Royal Canadian Mounted Police records under Canada’s Access to Information Act beginning in 2020. The documents, released July 29, cover RCMP security spending on internationally protected persons visiting Canada between 2014/15 and 2019/20. The total spent on Harry and Meghan across that period: $539,575 Canadian dollars - roughly $383,000 USD.

That sum accounted for approximately 10 percent of the $5.2 million total spent protecting more than 100 visiting dignitaries, heads of state, and royals during the same period.

What the Numbers Show

Harry’s security costs peaked in 2017-18 at $364,859 Canadian - the year he proposed to Meghan as she filmed the final season of Suits in Toronto. King Charles and Camilla’s official 2017 visit to Ontario and Quebec cost $178,584 - less than half of Harry’s peak year alone.

“We had a good five, six months almost with just privacy,” Meghan said of the Toronto period at the time. The RCMP documents record what that privacy cost.

The Contradiction That Makes This Current

Harry stepped back from royal duties in 2020 citing a desire for privacy and independence. He has since been involved in an ongoing legal fight with the British government over taxpayer-funded security that was withdrawn after he left royal life. The newly released Canadian records document that during the period he holds up as a model of private life - secretly visiting his girlfriend in Toronto - he was quietly running up the highest public security bill of any VIP visiting the country.

References: Security for Prince Harry’s Visits to Canada Topped All Internationally Protected Persons | Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Security Cost Canadians Over $383,000