While the department has struggled to identify where the money is going, Defence Minister Peter MacKay on Friday tried to summarize the spending hike, highlighting investments in military equipment, bases and treatment for the sick and injured.
Estimated defence program expenditures for the 2011-12 budget year, which ended in March, increased $2.8 billion compared to the previous year (to $22.5 billion from $19.7 billion), according to the Finance Department's fiscal monitor, released two weeks ago.
A whopping $3.8 billion was spent on defence programs in March alone — a 55 per cent spike compared to the same month a year earlier — just as Treasury Board president Tony Clement was urging bureaucrats to avoid "March madness" spending in the final month of the fiscal year.
The spending at DND ratcheted up at the same time the combat mission in Afghanistan wound down, which has sparked questions from opposition parties about where the department is spending so much cash and why it refuses to release the information.
Postmedia News asked DND two weeks ago for details on the large spending increase but the department has not released the information, insisting it won't be available until the numbers are finalized in the fall.
"The April 2011 to March 2012 results presented in the March 2012 Fiscal Monitor are not the final results for the year as a whole," DND spokeswoman Laura McIntyre said Friday in an email.
"The final year-end results . . . will be available in the fall."
Liberal defence critic John McKay has also been searching for answers, but he said he isn't getting far and questioned why DND won't release the information.
"How does your spending go up 14 per cent when you're supposed to be in cutbacks?" McKay said Friday.
"Something ain't quite right here," he said. "It's virtually impossible to find out what has been going on there."
McKay also questions why the department's overall spending would increase in a year the Afghanistan combat mission — one of DND's largest expenses — came to an end and should have produced savings.
"Just when you think that you should be getting some sort of, if you will, Afghanistan dividend, you actually find yourself spending more money than you spent in the previous year," he added.
"It makes no sense to me."
The defence minister, when questioned Friday, said the cost increases are partly due to purchases of new military equipment, with the bulk of DND spending going to salaries for soldiers and department staff.
"We're doing major procurement investments and putting money into bases, programs. We've increased spending of course for the ill and injured," MacKay told reporters on Parliament Hill.
"We've put in place a number of programs to support families across the country so these investments demonstrate our commitment to improve and expand upon the funding there for the Canadian Forces."
Asked why the department is having so much difficulty explaining the spending increase, MacKay said: "I've just explained it," and did not provide further details.
DND has faced fierce criticism recently for its accounting practices, including from the federal auditor general, for failing to fully disclose the government's estimated costs of the F-35 stealth fighter jet program.
Earlier this spring, the auditor general said the Conservative government would have known before the last election that the F-35 program would cost at least $10 billion more than what DND was telling Parliament and the public.
The issue dates back to March 2011, when the parliamentary budget officer released a report weeks before the federal election that estimated the F-35 would cost taxpayers nearly $30 billion.
The Defence Department maintained the stealth fighter would actually cost $14.7 billion, even less than the $16 billion budgeted for the program.
But the auditor general found during his own analysis that DND had estimated as far back as June 2010 that the total cost would be at least $25 billion.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Jason Fekete
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