Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government failed to reveal the true cost of its search for the Franklin Expedition to Parliament, reporting only a fraction of what the government actually spent, iPolitics has learned.

The search for Franklin’s ill-fated Arctic expedition has cost Canadian taxpayers more than $2.8 million dollars — more than twice the $1.1 million sum the government reported earlier this year.

And that sum does not include the $7.2 million cost of an ad campaign the government launched at the end of June to promote the role of the Franklin Expedition in Canada’s history.

Liberal MP Joyce Murray accused the Harper government of trying to conceal the amount it spent on its search for the Franklin expedition at a time when it was cutting money for defence and veterans’ services.

“I think they wanted to hide the fact that they are spending money in a way to serve their own political, partisan benefit while cutting the funds that have been dedicated to important services that are needed by Canadians,” said Murray, whose order paper question sparked the government’s original answer.

The quest to solve one of Canada’s great historical mysteries — the disappearance of the 1845 expedition headed by Sir John Franklin which set out in search of the Northwest Passage — has been a priority for the Conservative government and Prime Minister Stephen Harper in particular. Franklin’s ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were last seen in Baffin Bay.

Beyond the historical interest, however, there’s a geopolitical struggle at work. Concrete proof that the British explorer was the first to discover the Northwest Passage helps reinforce Canada’s Arctic sovereignty and its claim to the strategic area.

Parks Canada had been searching for Franklin’s ships since 2008, surveying hundreds of square kilometres of Arctic seabed, partly in partnership with other government departments and private sector partners.

In October, Harper announced that the search had found the remains of HMS Erebus in the eastern stretches of the Queen Maud Gulf off the western coast of the Adelaide Peninsula. In April, experts conducted an ice diving mission as part of NUNALIVIT 2015 in a bid to recover more artifacts and learn more about the wreck.

In June, in response to a detailed question put on the order paper by Murray, Harper’s government reported that various departments, including Parks Canada, Environment Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, had spent a total of $1.1 million in the search for the ships. The Department of National Defence refused to answer the question, saying the total cost of its operation was not yet available.

It turns out, however, that DND spent more than all other departments combined in its quest to fulfill the Harper government’s dream of finding the ships and their artifacts.

Daniel Blouin, spokesperson for DND, said the armed forces estimates that it spent $1.7 million on the search while Defence Research and Development Canada spent $50,000, for a total of $1.75 million.

The project has also benefited from some deep-pocketed private sector donors. For example, according to Canada Revenue Agency records, BlackBerry co-founder Jim Balsillie’s family foundation donated $2.5 million in 2011 and $875,000 in 2013 to the Arctic Research Foundation he established. The Arctic Research Foundation, which is a registered charity authorized to issue tax receipts, helped outfit the research ship, the Martin Bergmann, which has been central to the search for Franklin’s ships.

While the Harper government has cut budgets for other archaeological activity across Canada, it has poured money into finding — and promoting — the Franklin expedition discoveries.

In late June, the Department of Canadian Heritage launched a $7.2 million advertising campaign to run a series of ads on television, the Internet and in movie theatres about the Franklin expedition, said department spokesman Charles Cardinal. The ads came to a halt once the election campaign was called on August 2.

The department will not say how much of the $7.2 million was spent, saying that will be revealed next year in the government’s annual report on advertising.

The department also developed an interactive online game as part of the Canada 150 campaign about the Great Canadian North, Cardinal said.

“Franklin’s ships are an important part of Canadian history given that his expeditions, which took place nearly 200 years ago, laid the foundations of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty,” said Cardinal. “With that in mind, we wanted the viewers to experience their very own Arctic adventure, learn about the hardship of exploring the North and increase their awareness and knowledge of the history and heritage of Canada’s North.”

Murray, Liberal defence critic, applauds those who found the remains of the Franklin expedition but questions the spending at a time when Canada’s armed forces are strapped for cash.

“$1.75 million is a surprising amount for a time when the Department of Defence has had to cut its Arctic training in half because of budget cuts and clawbacks by the government.”

There was also no justification for not revealing the true cost of the search to Parliament, she added.

“I think they tried to make it difficult to access as they have done with so much normally available information … It’s a pattern of secrecy and withholding information,” she said. “This is clearly coming from the political level and it is a government that tries to control and manage everything to its own advantage.”

NDP Defence Critic Jack Harris said the Harper government regularly refuses to reveal details of its spending – whether it is concerning the proposed F-35 purchase or questions from the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

Harris also questioned the way the discovery of the Erebus was transformed into a platform for Stephen Harper, who was seen in pictures standing on a ship looking through binoculars.

“I thought they were trying to make it look like the guy who discovered the Franklin was the fellow standing on the front of the boat with the binoculars in his hand.”

The Harper government didn’t hesitate to put Canadian troops in harms way so that they could get photos of Harper on the front lines in Iraq, Harris added.

“It fits with a pattern of spending more money than they will tell us about, doing things for public relations purposes as opposed to the real purpose.”

Harris congratulated those who actually found the remains of the Franklin Expedition but pointed out that the government launched a $7.2 million ad campaign to promote the search while cutting budgets and laying off Parks Canada employees across the country.

The Conservative Party has not yet responded to questions from iPolitics.

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