Reply #2: $1.35B higher. [View All]

[HeresyLives]

OTTAWA — The Treasury Board says that the cost of Canada's military mission in Afghanistan for the next two years will be $1.35 billion higher than projected a year ago by the Defence Department.
Those revised estimates of the incremental costs of the Canadian Forces mission in Afghanistan are posted on the Treasury Board website.

The Defence Department, citing national security provisions, censored an Access to Information request by the federal NDP that asked for those figures three weeks ago.
The Treasury Board says the military mission will cost $822 million in the fiscal year 2009-10 and $943 million in 2010-11. It also estimates that the mission will cost $178 million in fiscal 2011-12, when Canadian troops are expected to pull out of combat roles in Afghanistan. It's the first time figures for that year have been made available.

"The left hand and the right hand seem to have different strategies here. It's time they came clean and let the public know what was going on," said NDP defence critic Jack Harris.

"It's pretty strange. You've got secret numbers for national security reasons, then they put them on their website."
These latest estimates by Treasury Board are far larger than the Defence Department predicted in April 2008 when it released information to the NDP that showed a $261-million price tag for 2009-10 and $150 million for 2010-11.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/Canada+Afghan+will+more/1725558/story.html