Opposition parties continued to hammer the Conservatives in the House of Commons Friday after it was revealed that more than $1 billion in funding for the Veterans Affairs department has gone unspent.
The department, which is responsible for the care and benefits of military veterans, has returned $1.13 billion to the federal coffers over the past seven years. The figure came out earlier this week in the House of Commons.
On Friday, NDP House Leader Peter Julian accused the Conservatives of misleading veterans. Earlier this year, the department said it did not have enough funding to increase support and services for veterans.
“Not a penny of that money can be carried forward,” Julian said.
Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino was again a no-show in the House of Commons on Friday, leaving his parliamentary secretary, Parm Gill, to field questions.
Gill called the move a “completely normal” practice.
The government’s financial statements do show that every department puts millions of unspent money back into the treasury.
However, critics say Veterans Affairs represents some of the country’s most vulnerable people.
“It’s a huge amount of money that potentially could have been transferred to our ill and injured veterans who are in need right now,” said the Royal Canadian Legion’s Bruce Poulin.
Aid groups are also outraged over lapsed funds. Low-income countries including Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Mali were also short-changed after the Foreign Affairs department returned $125 million.
It’s money aid groups say could mean the difference between life and death in developing countries.
Fraser Reilly-King, a policy analyst for the Canadian Council of International Co-operation, said the Conservatives don’t want to spend the money.
“We have an election next year and it seems that the government in power is doing everything to ensure that it’s going to post a surplus,” Reilly-King told CTV News.
But earlier this week, Conservative MP Stella Ambler defended the handling of the budget, saying it was “patently false” that unspent money was going toward deficit reduction.
“It goes right back into Veterans Affairs for use the following year,” she said. “I also want to make it clear that not one veteran is turned away from receiving the service because of this.”
The Royal Canadian Legion is still waiting for a response after asking Fantino directly why he said his department didn’t have enough money to increase programs for veterans in need when there was still hundreds of millions of dollars left in the budget.
With a report by CTV’s Deputy Ottawa Bureau Chief Laurie Graham
