Bill Moore-Kilgannon wants to know what happened to $25.9 million, and he wants to know before March 3.
In politics, a month is an eternity. And in Alberta,  a month is literally everything at the moment: the provincial election unfolds in just 28 days.
So last week, when the Alberta Information and Privacy Office told Moore-Kilgannon, who is the director of Public Interest Alberta, that he wouldn’t know the fate of $25.9 million earmarked for childcare funding for another 27 days—i.e., on election day—Moore-Kilgannon was furious.
“During an election, we should know what was happening with that money,” he says. “There is such a tight control of information that trying to do public policy analysis and advocacy is a real challenge in this province.”
When the federal government announced the funding in April of last year, Moore-Kilgannon eagerly waited to hear the details on how the province would spend the money. When September rolled without any announcements from the province, Moore-Kilgannon launched a media campaign. “This is about transparency and accountability,” he told SEE at the time. “The federal government said this money is specifically for creating childcare spaces.”
In December, he filed a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIP) request. Last week, the Alberta Information and Privacy Office told him they would not release any documents until March 3, election day.
Of course, that raises questions about whether the information is being delayed on purpose because of the election. Nor would it be the first time. Ever since he began his public life with the Parkland Institute in 1997, Moore-Kilgannon has faced the same difficulties getting access to public information.“It is a politically motivated process,” says former NDP research director John Kolkman. PIA’s struggle is consistent with his nine years of experience at the legislature. If the requested information is the least bit politically sensitive, he says, requests are automatically delayed for an extra 30 days, enough time for the Tories to prepare for any potentially embarrassing revelations and possibly turn the situation to their advantage.
Election speak
On February 7, while Moore-Kilgannon was waiting for his FOIP request to wend its way through the system, Ed Stelmach announced his childcare plan at Tiny Treasures Day Care in Red Deer. The plan included a promise to increase childcare spaces in the province over the next three years, if the Tories are re-elected. But details were sparse.
“It’s easy to sit back and say, ‘We are going to create 14,000 childcare spaces,’” Moore-Kilgannon says. “They need to show exactly how they are going to do that, how much money they are going to spend.... During an election, people absolutely have a right to know how much money that is going to be and not just banal generalities. Otherwise, the election is just based on nice phrases.”
This isn’t the first time the Tories have been accused of withholding information until debate on a hot topic died down. During the 2004 election, for instance, the flight logs for government airplanes were not released until after the election, prompting an RCMP investigation into the incident.
David Sands, a spokesperson in the premier’s office (and a government employee), says neither the public relations department nor the FOIP office knows when an election will be called, and so could not have engineered a more “convenient” release date for information about the childcare funding. For example, he says, when he sent out the media release for the scrum with Stelmach in the legislature TV room after the throne speech, he had no idea the election was going to be called moments before the scrum. Neither does the premier’s public relations staff know when a FOIP request has been lodged—unless, of course, they have documents that answer the request.
“I can see why that raises questions,” Sands says, “but the letter that went to Public Interest Alberta went to them before anyone knew the election date. I can say that with the utmost confidence because I work in the premier’s office and I didn’t even know what date the election was going to be called.”
Not knowing is half the battle
Information stonewalling certainly isn’t confined to elections. During his nine-year stint with the NDP, Kolkman took part in the “Third Way” debate on healthcare privatization. The NDP filed a FOIP request for information on a government research contract with AON, a Chicago-based consulting firm.
Kolkman waited 60 days for the documents. After 60 days, the government must justify further delay with the Freedom of Information commissioner—but Kolkman was told he’d have to wait even longer, as the FOIP office in Alberta Health and Wellness was understaffed.
“It’s politically motivated,” he says. “They just didn’t want to release the documents until the debate on the Third Way legislation was over.”
During the health privatization debate, Harvey Voogd, who during this time was director of Friends of Medicare, says he received a steady flow of leaked information from cabinet meetings—information that was vital to the success of their fight against privatization. “If the issue is high-profile enough and enough people are disturbed by it,” he says, “it’s amazing what will turn up in a brown paper envelope.”  
Voogd is now the director of Vibrant Communities Edmonton, working for low-income families. From this vantage point, he sees that even though many Albertans are concerned about childcare, the average person (and even some people within the childcare sector) is not aware of that $25.9 million in federal money.
And making sure people don’t know is half the battle, says Moore-Kilgannon. He recently asked Alberta Health and Wellness to find out the total number of long-term care beds in the province. He says the department told him they didn’t know, and suggested he speak directly to the health regions—a process that took months.
Simple stonewalling is not the only technique available to the provincial government, says Kolkman. He remembers the time when he requested information on a government land deal in the Fort McMurray area. Instead of releasing the information to the NDP, the government went public with it, adding their own spin to the story, at the same time the NDP received the information, he says. “And then you are telling me it’s not a politically driven process?”
The FOIP office is independent of the legislature and the privacy commissioner Frank Work reports to a multi-party committee. He’s sort of like the Auditor General, says assistant commissioner Marylin Mun. Albertans should remember that before the FOIP act, citizens didn’t have the right to request information, nor the support of an independent body. “Nothing’s ever perfect,” she adds.
Ignoring the basics
Scott Hennig, the Alberta director of the fiscally conservative Canadian Taxpayers Federation, shares Kolkman and Moore-Kilgannon’s ire over the FOIP process.
“It’s a frustrating process here in Alberta,” he says, describing delays and piles of paperwork. As Alberta’s fiscal watchdog, Hennig does 10 FOIP requests a year. He’d love to do more, but the time and money required is simply beyond his resources in some cases. For example, he recently lodged a FOIP request for all the documents related to provincial research on new municipal taxing powers.  He received a fee assessment of over $1000. (He’s now refining his request.)
Kolkman has simply dropped a number of his FOIP requests. As a busy opposition staffer, he couldn’t justify the expense or the drain on his time. “When you have a small budget like the NDP opposition did, it basically means you can’t get the documents.”
Much of Hennig’s job involves finding out how the government spends taxpayer’s money. With transfers from the federal government, such as the $25.9 million Moore-Kilgannon is interested in, following the money trail is particularly difficult.
“It’s like taking a bucket of water and throwing it into a pool and then trying to figure out where that bucket of water went,” he says. “It’s impossible to know where each dollar goes.”
The Public Affairs Bureau, with its centralized communications, is at least part of the problem, according to Moore-Kilgannon. “One of the things we are advocating for is a communications system similar to what other provinces do, where the department themselves have their own communications and it’s not so tightly controlled.”
Moore-Kilgannon thinks there’s more than just political maneuvering going on here. He sees the Tories’ unwillingness to release information on issues like childcare as a lack of policy. “Sadly,” he says, “I think they are creating social policy on the fly. I don’t see them doing the hard work of really analyzing the situation and crisis and coming up with very clear, articulate plans. How can they go to a childcare centre in Red Deer with a big plan on childcare and not state how much money they are investing?”