documents reveal... not much

Bill Moore-Kilgannon wants an investigation into the use of federal funding for childcare in Alberta.

The executive director of Public Interest Alberta (PIA), has sent a letter to federal auditor general Sheila Fraser regarding $26 million of federal funding specifically earmarked for Alberta childcare that that he says has instead found its way into the province’s general revenue.

Moore-Kilgannon placed a freedom of information request about the funds long before the provincial election was called, but the office could not adhere to the stipulated 30-day waiting period.

He received the documents last week, but much of the text was blanked out, including the content of e-mails regarding media calls and “key messaging” on the topic.

“This is not the secrets of the Afghan war,” says Moore-Kilgannon. “This is childcare funding.... There should be no excuse for us to get all these blank pages.”

However, he says enough information survived in the pages to prove that the money did go into general funds instead of the childcare budget. On page 17 of the FOIP document, for instance, there is an e-mail to Cathy Ducharme, a communications officer with Alberta’s Children’s Services, stating that the money “is coming to Alberta—general revenue fund not ACS directly.”

While Moore-Kilgannon is upset that he couldn’t share this information during the election campaign, he says PIA will continue to push on this issue.

Meanwhile, Vivian Turner, executive director of the Garneau/University Child Care Centre, says parents phone her daily, sometimes in tears, because they cannot find a daycare space for their child. Parents, and most often women, she says, are being forced to stay out of the workforce because they cannot find proper care for their children.

edmonton • protest

five Years of Antiwar protests

This month the war in Iraq celebrates its five-year anniversary, and federal debate about whether Canada will extend our commitment in Afghanistan continues. 

Doug Meggison, a leading member of Edmonton Coalition Against War and Racism, hopes that the Bloc Québécois and the NDP will be able to extend parliamentary debate beyond March 13—the date when the Tory bill to extend the mission until 2011 will be voted on—so that more voices can be heard on the issue. The Liberals have made several amendments to bill, and are expected to vote for it.

Two days later on March 15, ECAWAR will be recreating their first anti-Iraq war protest by bringing the event back downtown this year. On March 20, 2003, ECAWAR led 18,000 people from Churchill Square to the legislature. Meggison notes that the Canadian participation in the “war on terror” began in October 2001. “The total length of the war is way longer than the Second World War,” he says.

After more than five years of protesting U.S. and Canadian aggression, ECAWAR still has their core group of organizers, but Meggison says a sense of fatigue has set in after so many years of work with no results. Still, he hopes Saturday’s protest will attract at least 200 people, noting, “The struggle for a world of peace continues.”