OTTAWA -- In a significant policy shift, the Canadian government now believes that telling the country’s taxpayers the future cost of the war in Afghanistan would be a threat to national security, Canwest News Service has learned.

The Defence Department cited a national security exemption when it censored a request under Access to Information by the federal NDP for the military costs of Canada’s military participation in the NATO-led, United Nations-sanctioned military mission to Afghanistan.

When the NDP asked for the identical figures last year, the military made them public. Canwest News Service was able to disclose in April 2008 that the yearly incremental cost of the war would top $1-billion for the first time since Canada’s military became involved in Afghanistan in 2002.

But this year, military censors cited Section 15 of the act in blocking out the figure.

In a June 3 letter to an NDP researcher, Julie Jansen, the director of the military’s access branch, cited “the defence of Canada or any state allied” with it, in justifying the withholding of the figures for the three next fiscal years.

Section 15 of the act allows the withholding of any “information the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to be injurious to the conduct of international affairs, the defence of Canada or any state allied or associated with Canada or the detection, prevention or suppression of subversive or hostile activities.”

Jansen also invoked a Section 21 exemption, which gives a government department the discretionary power to disclose records that include negotiation plans, deliberations or consultations, or “administrative plans that have not yet been put into operation.”

In an identical request last year, the Defence Department released the estimates for the fiscal years leading up to 2011, the year that Parliament and the government has said Canada’s current military mission in Afghanistan must end.

“In the face of more public interest in the ongoing cost of the war, it is surprising the DND would now take the attitude that now is the time that we will start pulling back on information and not be as transparent as before,” said NDP defence critic Jack Harris.

Military commanders commonly cite the need to withhold information in order not to give an edge to the Taliban and al-Qaida insurgency, which has gained strength in the Kandahar region in the last three years, driving up the Canadian Forces death toll to 120.

Usually, the information blackouts cover the exact numbers of troops, tanks and other military assets. Any mention of future military operations is deemed strictly off limits, and embedded journalists who cover the war in Kandahar sign a waiver agreeing not to publish such information in advance when they learn of it.

The military’s new secrecy comes after the financial cost of the mission became a major issue for several days during last fall’s federal election campaign.

During the campaign, after he secured the agreement of all parties including the ruling Conservatives, Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page released a detailed report that suggested the full cost of the mission could reach $18.1-billion by 2011. Page’s study took into account the long-term costs of caring for physically and mentally ill soldiers.