OTTAWA—Canada’s military role in Iraq has flown into a fog of secrecy, with a hidden price tag and vague details of the missions Canadian aircraft are flying.

That concern was driven home Thursday when a top commander revealed that Canadian fighter jets had helped support the drop of humanitarian supplies over Iraq — but refused to provide any specifics.

Col. Daniel Constable, Canadian commander of joint task force Iraq, boasted about the Canadian role in escorting another nation’s transport aircraft on a humanitarian mission to drop water, tents and blankets to “beleaguered” Iraqi civilians.

But in a Thursday briefing he declined to say how many CF-18s took part, where or when it happened or the amount of aid that was dropped.

“It’s a matter of operational security,” Constable said in a teleconference call.

Canadian officials instead referred journalists to the U.S. military for answers, though there was nothing on the website of the U.S. Central Command about the mission.

Later in the day, Canadian military staff said CF-18s were supporting an air drop conducted by the Australians, a mission that the Australian defence department had revealed in a news release two days earlier.

Speaking on background, a military official said countries involved in the fight against the Islamic State, also known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, are reluctant to provide detailed information about their roles for fear it could spark a retaliatory attack by ISIL sympathizers. That fear was spurred by the murders of two Canadian soldiers here in Canada in October by radicalized assailants.

Those attacks came after the Conservative government dispatched the military to join international efforts to stem the spread of Islamic State, an Al Qaeda splinter group in Iraq and Syria.

Still, the reluctance on the part of Canadians to reveal more casts a further shroud over the ongoing mission, which involves nine aircraft and 600 support personnel operating in Kuwait, plus a small team of military advisers in Iraq.

Journalists have been barred access from the Kuwaiti base where Canadian aircraft are stationed. As well, Defence Minister Rob Nicholson has refused to release cost estimates for the mission, even though commanders have provided the government with the potential price tag.

“This government just doesn’t feel that they have any responsibility to be accountable on this stuff,” NDP MP Robert Chisholm told the Star Thursday, adding that “Canadians deserve better than this.”

“Canadians are concerned with what happens in the world and the role that this country plays in it but they’re not stupid and they don’t want to be taken for granted,” he said.

Nicholson told a Commons committee on Tuesday that taxpayers will likely have to wait until months after the operation is over before they learn what it cost.

Just over a month into the mission, the defence minister said it’s tough to predict what the cost will be once it ends.

“When the costs are known we will table them in the usual way,” Nicholson told the defence committee.

“To be exact at the beginning of a mission as to exactly what a mission will cost is always challenging.”

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That response sparked a sharp rebuke from Chisholm at the meeting, who asked why the government is refusing to “come clean” on the cost of the mission.

“Why is it that you think it’s not your responsibility to be accountable here,” Chisholm told Nicholson on Tuesday.

Chisholm’s concern was echoed by Liberal MP Joyce Murray, who also expressed concern about the refusal to make public the estimated cost

“I find it a surprising stand on the part of this government. Can you give some rationale for this unusual approach,” she said.

Roland Paris, a professor at the University of Ottawa, said the Canadian silence stands in sharp contrast to the openness of the U.S. defence department.

The website of the U.S. defence department provides a running tally of the cost of its ISIL mission — by Nov. 12, it was costing about $8 million a day and $776 million since it started in August.

“There’s a measure of transparency in the American operation, both on the operational and on the financial side, which is largely missing on the Canadian side,” said Paris, who holds the research chair in international security and governance at the university.

He said there is no strategic or security reason to keep the numbers out of public view.

“The United States is providing this information regularly to its citizens. It doesn’t make sense to me that the government would choose to withhold that information,” Paris told the Star.

During Canada’s participation in the 2011 air campaign over Libya, then-defence minister Peter MacKay made public how much the mission had cost to date and how much it was expected to cost.

Since the end of October, Canadian aircraft have flown 116 sorties; 72 by CF-18 jets; a CC-150 refuelling aircraft has flown 21 missions; and the CP-140 Aurora reconnaissance planes have flown 23 missions.