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OTTAWA — Almost 14% of the money that Canada’s newly amalgamated Foreign Affairs Department planned to spend alleviating poverty in poor countries in the last year has been returned, unspent, to the Finance Department.

Foreign Affairs spent just shy of $792-million on aid to low-income countries in 2013-14, but had $917-million available, leaving more than $125-million in lapsed funding.

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The figures are contained in the recently released performance report for Foreign Affairs, the first since the department absorbed the now-defunct Canadian International Development Agency.

Those figures emerge in a week in which the Conservative government has trumpeted spending announcements of about $28-million to help end early child forced marriage and to combat violence against children in developing countries.

Liberal foreign affairs critic Marc Garneau said the lapsed aid funding, combined with unspent money in other departments, is part of a government plan to fatten the overall surplus in time for next year’s federal election.