Trudeau was New Year’s guest of the Aga Khan

ISLAND IN BAHAMAS

OTTAWA • Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his family and a few friends spent the New Year as the guests of the Aga Khan on the spiritual leader’s private island in the Bahamas, the National Post has learned.

The Aga Khan, head of the world’s 15 million Ismaili Muslims, has been a friend of the Trudeau family for years, beginning with Pierre Trudeau.

“Canada has come to share a close relationship with the Aga Khan and bestowed honorary citizenship on him in 2009,” Justin Trudeau said in a statement issued Dec. 13 on the occasion of the Aga Khan’s 80th birthday.

“I am proud to call His Highness both a mentor and friend. He has shown time and time again that no matter our faith, where we were born, what colour is our skin, or what language we speak, we are equal members of this world.”

The Aga Khan also has long ties to Canada, including having the distinction of being the only faith leader to address a joint session of the House of Commons and Senate. He did so in 2014 at the invitation of former prime minister Stephen Harper.

The Aga Khan is also the founder and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network, a significant recipient of Canadian foreign aid, receiving $310 million for 16 projects since 2004. Most recently, the Trudeau government granted the network $55 million over five years to improve maternal and child health in Afghanistan.

The Swiss-born Prince Shah Karim Al Hussaini, Aga Khan IV, as he is formally known, is one of the world’s wealthiest royals, estimated to have a net worth in excess of $1 billion.

He is said to have dedicated his wealth and the influence of his position to the elimination of global poverty, to the promotion of the status of women and to the celebration of Islamic art and architecture.

The Aga Khan purchased the 349-acre Bell Island in the Bahamas in 2009 for as much as $100 million. Bell Island is part of a 365-island archipelago known as the Exumas and was once described by The Hollywood Reporter as the “veritable Hamptons of the Bahamas” where, “everyone from Johnny Depp to Bernard Arnault, CEO of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH Moet Hennessey, is an owner there.”

Kate Purchase, Trudeau’s director of communication, said the prime minister will be reimbursing the federal treasury for the costs of his and his family’s airfare to and from Nassau, the Bahamian capital.

He, his wife Sophie and their three children — but not his friends — flew on a Royal Canadian Air Force C-144 Challenger on Boxing Day and returned to Ottawa this week.

He remained on holiday this week at Harrington Lake, the prime minister’s official residence in the Gatineau hills north of Ottawa.