According to the Ottawa Citizen, the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development left $300 million unspent last fiscal year. Unspent budgets are normal for the federal government; a sum of $300 million is not. It represents 10 per cent of the former Canadian International Development Agency’s budget last year. In 2011, only $25 million was unspent and the previous year, a mere $2 million.

This money had been earmarked for aid and development programs abroad and is on top of a prior $377 million cut to the country’s aid budget.

When I was a reporter, I pored over the government’s spending estimates and public accounts, both of which spell out how much the government intended to spend and how much it actually spent. Unspent funds are relatively normal, just not to this extent.

Critics from development groups immediately jumped to the most cynical conclusion: the government is further cutting the foreign aid budget by stealth, hoping no one will notice. Perhaps the general public won’t notice, but foreign aid and development groups certainly will. Cuso International is still waiting on word to see if its funding cycle will continue (it ends in March 2014).

Giving the government the benefit of the doubt, perhaps this is an attempt to more strongly adhere to practices that ensure that millions of dollars are not going to waste. Indeed, this is an international trend, for more accountability and measurable results.

It is just unfortunate that some projects that had already been approved and vetted (by the Harper administration itself) will now not go ahead, at least in the short term.

Again, with this move, the Harper government continues to create confusion about what its “development” mandate is, beyond fiscal accountability. It has yet to respond to this article, which you can read here.