Can I touch on the budget again?
I know my chief financial officer will start to quiver here. We get the money we require for veterans, and we're never sure how many veterans will present. The one variable we don't control is the number of veterans who ask for service. We start off each financial year based on the best evidence and the best rigour, projecting how many might be in long-term care, how many might need physiotherapy and so on. But we're not absolutely sure.
Last year in particular, with the pension for life, a new program, we were not sure how many folks would go for the lump sum versus the monthly. We could project it based on a best financial decision, but we just didn't know. The reality is, as we kicked off the last financial year, we were in the area of $4.1 billion to $4.2 billion. In the first quarter, we saw a lot more veterans coming forward, and a lot more veterans than projected going for the lump sum. Sara and her team had to put in a request for over $900 million additional funding in a year. Because it's a statutory obligation, there is no discretion. The government gave us that funding, and we are going through that at a rapid rate to get more decisions out the door.
Through the discussion about the new programming over the past few years, mindful that we have implemented, operationalized, over $10 billion of new programming.... If you recall, two years ago I was here with minister O'Regan. In 2018, we did 45 town halls coast to coast, five regional summits and a national summit. We went to social media to get out the message about all these extraordinary programs. People listened, and I was absolutely thrilled to see more people applying.
In 2015, for example, the career transition services we had at that time.... I still remember one of the first briefings I got from the chief financial officer saying we had to reduce the career transition services from $300,000 to $50,000. I asked why would we do that. He said that we only had 13 people apply. This year we're spending a lot of money on career transition services, because people are coming forward and using it to get career counselling and to find a civilian job where they want to settle.
I was absolutely thrilled with the education and training benefit. Here is the first time since World War II that we're implementing a program for folks who retired healthy, not a program only for medically releasing, because medically releasing today, even before this program, could access up to $78,500 for vocational rehabilitation. I have met ordinary seamen, retired, going through a Ph.D. in psychology on vocational rehab in Vancouver. Now they have the education and training benefit, and literally hundreds of veterans are coming forward.
We are also incentivizing people to stay in the military. That's why we set up the six-year period and the 12-year period.