Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Formally, I thank you both for your service. I've really never had the opportunity to do so. To my colleagues here, all of whom have direct military experience on this side of table, thank you very much for your service. I'm the only one that doesn't have direct service, but my immediate family had 100 years of direct service.
I'm hoping, Minister, you can confirm my understanding of the misinformation that is out there with respect to lapsed funding. I've taken the initiative to print out the public accounts over the course of the past nine years, as well as the planning and priorities documents. My observation, as I'm looking at the figures, is that in 2005-06 we had a budget of $2.85 billion, and in 2013-14, that was up to $3.6 billion. Over the course of those nine years, our estimate of what we were going to spend, over nine years cumulatively, was $30.6 billion, of which we actually spent $30 billion. We actually spent 98% of our budget.
Then, during the course of the year, with the planning and priorities documents, I notice that every year we asked for additional authorities—every single year. As a matter of fact, in three of those years where we didn't ask for additional authorities, we would have actually exceeded budget, which I understand is not allowed. The reality is that all of those additional authorities weren't required. A budget is an estimate. We want to make sure we have the funds. We ask for additional funds because we want to make sure no veteran goes unserved.
Minister, in your opinion, lapsed funding doesn't mean lapsed services in any way, does it? Does any veteran go unserved because of a lack of funds within the veterans affairs department?