HALIFAX – Today, Halifax NDP candidate Megan Leslie and Sakville—Eastern Shore MP Peter Stoffer are calling for a formal investigation onto the $150,000 grant by Conservative minister Peter MacKay which is now at the centre of a controversy involving the resignation of a Conservative candidate.

“Peter MacKay is Stephen Harper’s man in Nova Scotia. It was MacKay’s job to deliver Conservative candidates like Rosamond Luke, and it was MacKay who gave out the grant to the organization Rosamond Luke headed,” Leslie said. “Canadians deserve to know what happened to this money.”

Media reports today state that the former Conservative candidate in Halifax has been suspended from her position due to “accounting irregularities” and that the program MacKay’s grant was directed to has been forced to close its doors.

“The Conservatives targeted women’s advocacy groups for $5 million in cuts, and now they can’t seem to account for this grant. We need an independent third party, the Auditor General, to look at this and provide some answers,” Leslie said.

In a letter to federal Auditor General Sheila Fraser, Stoffer calls for a formal investigation of the $150,000 grant MacKay awarded Luke’s organization in March of this year allegedly for a 12 month pilot project to “enable and integrate low-income immigrant women in Nova Scotia society through entrepreneurship, self-employment and micro enterprise projects.”

In his letter, Stoffer’s says, “I am personally supportive of the mission of the grant, and am now grievously worried that public funds approved by parliament for one purpose may have been used for a very different one. This is why I am hoping your office will take appropriate measures to ensure that this was not the case.”

The complete text of Stoffer’s letter to the Auditor General of Canada is attached.

Tuesday 23 September 2008

Sheila Fraser, FCA
Auditor General of Canada

Office of the Auditor General of Canada
240 Sparks Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0G6

Dear Ms Fraser:

I am writing to you to formally request an investigation by your office into a $142,700 grant by Status of Women Canada to a group calling itself the All Women’s Empowerment and Development Association (AWEDA).

I’m confident you are aware of recent media coverage concerning the Halifax-based organization as well as the controversy concerning its executive director Rosamond Luke and her political activities on behalf of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Most recently, today’s Halifax Chronicle Herald reports deeply worrying details about the decision by AWEDA’s board of directors to remove Ms. Luke from her position “citing accounting irregularities”.

The department’s Grant and Contribution disclosure record states that the $142,700 grant was awarded on March 2008. It also says that the project it is purposed to be in support of as follows: “This 12 month pilot project is designed to enable and integrate low-income immigrant women in Nova Scotia society through entrepreneurship, self-employment and micro enterprise projects.”

The very same Chronicle Herald article states that the doors of the program, opened near the Armdale Rotary, have now been closed – only six months into the 12 month pilot project.

I am personally supportive of the mission of the grant, and am now grievously worried that public funds approved by parliament for one purpose may have been used for a very different one. This is why I am hoping your office will take appropriate measures to ensure that this was not the case.

I look forward to hearing from you on this matter.

Sincerely,

Peter Stoffer, MP
Sackville—Eastern Shore