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While many parents struggle to find day-care spaces for their kids, the province has dumped into its general coffers $25.9 million in federal money that was supposed to help increase the number of spaces, critics say.
This past summer the Harper government dropped a plan to encourage new spaces with tax breaks and sent a total of $250 million to the provinces to top up their child-care budgets, although there were no strings attached. That included the $25.9 million for Alberta.
Bill Moore-Kilgannon, director of Public Interest Alberta, said Tuesday he suspects the government is diverting the federal money into general revenue.
"Our hope was that once they confirmed the money they could develop a plan and find the best way to use the $25 million, but there's been nothing," Moore-Kilgannon said.
Weslyn Mather, the Liberal critic for Children's Services, said she has tried to trace that money, but it seems to have disappeared. "They have to be accountable," Mather said. "This money is important and it must be used for the purpose it was meant."
Mary Lou Reeleder, spokeswoman for Children's Services, said: "When the Alberta government was determining its current budget, it took into account money from the federal government for child care and other federal transfers, so it's part of the $134-million (budget)."
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Moore-Kilgannon pointed out the federal day-care transfer was not announced until about two months after the 2007-08 budget was tabled in the legislature.
The government's claim that it knew the federal money was coming before it tabled the budget "... is starting to smell," Moore-Kilgannon said. "It's like a soiled diaper -- the longer they refuse to acknowledge the problem, the more it smells."
Although the province plans to spend more this year, the difference falls $8 million short of the $25.9-million injection from Ottawa, he said.
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- reprinted from the Edmonton Journal