Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening in adjournment proceedings to review and hopefully to find answers to a question that I initially put forward on April 23. It relates to funding in our overseas development assistance budgets.
In past years, and for many years until recently, when a member of Parliament or any member of the public opened the budget tabled by the Minister of Finance, they could find tables in the back that showed funding in each department of Canada, and previous years could be compared to this year.
In the last number of years, these budgetary tables have not been included in the budget. People have to wait for the main estimates and supplementary estimates.
I was struck, in reading the budget, that although we had heard many commitments in debate on extending the mission of bombing Iraq into bombing Syria, we had heard commitments over and over again in this place. Members will recall that this was not merely a military mission. This was largely a humanitarian mission. Canada was deeply committed to humanitarian assistance in the region.
On April 23, I put this to the minister. I was astonished to find that while in the budget there is $360 million earmarked for military purposes in Iraq and Syria, there is no mention at all of humanitarian assistance in that region. Moreover, there is no reference in the budget to any overseas development assistance spending. There is no budget for what used to be called CIDA, which has now been folded into something that is referred to around Ottawa as DFATD, the combined departments of foreign affairs and overseas development assistance.
We do know that two years ago the budget for international development in this country was slashed by $670 million, and it does appear on further inquiries that there is a freeze on overseas development assistance spending. I find it troubling that in the federal budget there was nothing mentioned for humanitarian assistance.
Now, the response I received was from the hon. Minister of International Development who said that the humanitarian assistance had increased in the Middle East. However, again the basic questions are as follows: What are we spending on development assistance? What is the total amount? How are we accommodating the various humanitarian crises?
Right now we have millions of refugees from Syria who are in Lebanon, in Turkey, and in Jordan. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has made a very clear statement that there is a total lack of resources. There is not sufficient funding coming from the global community to assist the humanitarian crisis in the region.
I would like to pursue that tonight in adjournment proceedings. I am hoping to find a response from the Conservative member as to the following: How much money are we spending on development assistance in total? How are we going to accommodate the various humanitarian crises? What will we spend on Iraq and Syria?
In the minute remaining, if I may, I recently learned that the government is preparing to do something that will be a massive waste of money: moving 3,000 civil servants in this city between Gatineau and downtown Ottawa. It will be moving 3,000 people from what used to be CIDA into different accommodations. The costs of this are astonishing. We have the personnel, the new offices, the packing up of file cabinets and computers and phone lines. It is an absurd thing to do by a government that claims to be fiscally responsible.
It is particularly absurd, and also disrespectful to the challenge of alleviating poverty globally, to spend money on moving civil servants around within Ottawa when the real crisis of mobility is the refugees, the Syrian refugees who are trying to get out of Syria and who are also stuck in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan without adequate assistance.