OTTAWA—A Conservative cabinet minister has yet to explain why some of her travel and hospitality expenses were altered after they were published on a federal government website.

International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda came under fire in April after The Canadian Press reported she had upgraded from one five-star hotel to a more expensive one, hired a chauffeur to drive her around in a luxury car and bought a glass of orange juice for $16 while attending a conference on international immunization in London last year.

Oda reimbursed taxpayers some of the money after the story broke — 10 months after she incurred the expenses — but never provided an explanation for her lavish spending.

She has also stayed silent on why some of the travel and hospitality expenses for other trips were amended after they were posted to the proactive disclosure section of the Canadian International Development Agency website.

On Wednesday, her spokesman Justin Broekema responded to a request for more information by emailing what Oda said in the House of Commons when asked about the changes on May 31.

“All incremental costs that should not have been expensed, including extraneous car service, et cetera, have been repaid. Only appropriate expenses and eligible expenses have been paid by the government,” Oda said in the statement, which did not specify which trips.

“We find it extremely unusual and disturbing that there is after-the-fact changing of expense claims. Either they were legitimate claims or they were not. Why do you need to change them?” NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus said on Wednesday.

Liberal ethics critic Scott Andrews says he plans to bring forward a motion asking the Commons ethics committee to study Oda’s travel expenses next week.

A web page last modified on May 4 shows the new totals for the reimbursed London expenses but also denotes a change in the amount expensed for airfare for a July 2011 trip to East Africa to monitor famine relief efforts.

A web page last modified April 20 shows an amended figure for “other expenses” during a trip to Busan, South Korea, to attend a forum on aid effectiveness in November and December 2011. It also shows amendments for two working lunches at the Parliamentary Restaurant in Ottawa, but it is unclear what was changed.

A web page last modified March 30 shows the dollar amount for meal expenses claimed during a January trip to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, for the two-year anniversary of the earthquake was amended.

There are 15 other entries that have been amended since Oda became the minister responsible for CIDA in August 2007, but the date the corresponding web pages were modified suggest the changes happened within a shorter time frame.

There were also some amendments made while Josée Verner, now a Conservative senator, was minister and under former Liberal minister Aileen Carroll.

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