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Lottery Grants

Ms Blakeman: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In a FOIP regarding lottery grants it is clear that government members, especially or specifically cabinet members, not only get to choose the recipient, specify the amount of the grant, but they also have control over the timing of the announcement. An e-mail sent on January 25, ’08, states that the ministers of SRD and children’s services wanted to delay their announcement of a $3 million grant for a rec centre in Cochrane to the following week “for obvious reasons.” The announcement of that grant was made on February 1, ’08, just four days before the election was called. My question is to the Premier. Why are government members allowed to manipulate the lottery grant system to their advantage?

Mr. Stelmach: Mr. Speaker, this question came up before from a member that was the former leader of the opposition and made some allegations. All lottery grants go through a very, very strict approval process. They’re made based on the merit of the application. There are, of course, when the announcements are made – take, for instance, the one we did in Calgary the other day, where one of the members opposite gave a very impassioned member’s statement on the value of that grant to his community. He is a member of the opposition. He was invited to attend, and I believe that we even have a picture to prove it.

Ms Blakeman: A totally new issue. It has not been raised before. Check the background.

To the Premier: given that at this very same time opposition members were told that any inquiry had to be directed to the minister of gaming’s office, why was the constituency staff of these cabinet ministers regularly included in the e-mails between lottery and gaming staff on the specifics of this grant?

Mr. Stelmach: Mr. Speaker, as I said before, the process for approving grants is done independently through the ministry staff that are assigned to follow the guidelines very carefully. In terms of the announcements, we try and work out announcements, I would think, with the group that’s receiving the grant, also looking at how we can have all members of the Legislature and those constituencies that have received the grant be there for the presentation. Sometimes, in fact, the groups receiving the grant request representation from their MLA, and it doesn’t matter if the MLA is in government or the opposition.

Ms Blakeman: In this FOIP that group wasn’t even consulted about when the announcement was. Again back to the Premier: given that this FOIP gives the appearance if not actually the advantage to government members, who are able to manipulate lottery grants prior to an election to set themselves up for re-election, will the Premier scrap this partisan process and return to the community lottery board style of grant allocation?

Mr. Stelmach: No, we’re not. In fact, I hope the member would look through Hansard and see that this question was raised before in terms of whether we go back to the system of community lottery boards. We’re not going back to that system. This is a system that’s very fair. We put additional millions of dollars into a large project grant that has been shared across constituencies, communities right across Alberta. All Albertans are benefiting from it, and we’ll continue to follow the same policy.