OTTAWA – A new report by the parliamentary budget office estimates that only $18.4 million of the $65 million set aside in March for the Last Post Fund to pay for funerals for needy veterans will actually be handed out.
The government was put in an embarrassing position last year when it was revealed that the fund, which is overseen by Veterans Affairs, had rejected 67 per cent of the requests put before it in the previous five years.
The last federal budget increased the amount of money available for funeral expenses, but did not loosen the eligibility criteria, which have not been revised in decades.
The rules essentially exclude many modern-day soldiers who served in the Cold War and Afghanistan and impose a means test that says a qualifying veteran’s annual income must have been less than $12,010 a year.
The budget office estimates that since the program remains geared towards a dwindling population of Second World War and Korean veterans, spending will be much less than what has been budgeted.
The fund has faced an increasing number of requests to bury poor ex-soldiers who didn’t qualify under existing regulations and it turned to private fundraising to help in some cases.
