Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 19th, 2013

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Unallocated is unallocated.

[Nadir Patel]

The $123.4 million was the total lapse.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Yes, sorry, it's a lapse, not spent. We'll call it that for sure. Okay.

[Nadir Patel]

Unspent. Of which...we break it down to the various buckets—

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Fine. So for the purposes of the discussion with the Minister, we'll say $320 million lapsed. Is that fair?

[Nadir Patel]

No, it was $123.4 million in vote 1, then in the grants and contributions it was $150 million, and the majority of that or a good chunk was assessed contributions to international organizations where the assessments came in a lot lower than we had expected.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Right. If I could cut through so people might actually understand this, there's about $300 million you could have spent that wasn't spent.

[Nadir Patel]

The way I would characterize it, it's $300 million that we actually—

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

That you had available to you to spend.

[Nadir Patel]

Well, we couldn't in fact spend it.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

This is beautiful.

[Nadir Patel]

Assessments, as an example, for international organizations was less than—

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

No, I get that.

[Nadir Patel]

We wouldn't have given them more than what we were assessed. So there's an example of money—

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

But you had access to that money to spend.

[Nadir Patel]

We had it in our reference levels, yes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Yes, thank you.

That is really what we're talking about here, that in this past year, Minister, you had a good sum of money that you could have accessed but went unallocated.

You might need help with this, Minister, but I don't think so because I actually have the numbers from your department. In the first quarter of last year, 2012-13, you had 33 projects of over $25,000 that were approved. In this first quarter of 2013-14, you only have approved six projects over that amount. What's going on here? There seems to be a real slowing down of approvals.

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

We're doing smaller ones.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Okay. How many?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

We'd certainly be happy to get you that information.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Okay, are you going to follow up with me on that? I'm sure you'll appreciate from what we just heard that there seems to be a real slowing down in approvals of that size, but you're contending here that there are many more smaller projects that are being approved—

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I said that could be the case. I have to look at each of the numbers.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

So you don't know? You don't know, but you're going to get back to me on that?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

That's what I said.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

We're concerned that the money that actually is there and available to be allocated for all the good things Canada should be doing is not being allocated.

If you look at the department's main estimates this year, I'll give you an example of something we're very concerned about. It indicated that the funds for the Global Peace and Security Fund were going to be sunsetted. You'll recall that conversation we had the last time you were at committee.

It's interesting and I'll go back to what you said in April. In reference to the Global Peace and Security Fund, you said:

We'll be coming forward with a new initiative in this regard that I think will get widespread support.

The supplementary estimates suggest that the program is back, but with a 30% budget cut. I guess what I'm asking is what happened to—