Rotten Applewood

Inside my riding of Calgary-Montrose and Ward 10, is the community of Applewood. The executive of the community association is made up primarily of people who worked on both the Hung Pham and Margot Aftergood campaigns. The interesting part is this. The Auditor General is now investigating money given to the community association.

Both the Calgary Herald and the CBC ran the story. The gist is that community lottery money to the tune of $30,000 was given to the Applewood community association to be used to make improvements to a school in Vietnam. The community association, a registered charity, then allegedly gave the money to a non-registered Vietnamese community group in Calgary. It is uncertain that any of the money made it to Vietnam.

When originally asked by the opposition Liberals on the matter, Minster of Community Development, Gary Mar stated that an individual at the Applewood community association had verbally told him that the money was sent directly to Vietnam. That individual has since recanted his statement, and the Minister has now asked the auditor general to look into the matter.

Now during the election I heard some rumors, and I stress that this is rumor and innuendo, from people I know inside the provincial Conservative party that there was shenanigans going on with community lottery money inside Montrose. This story makes me go hmmm. It would seem that election fraud isn't the only thing on the plate for these people.

Now I suspect that the Auditor General will find nothing, either because the people involved have covered their tracks well or the Tories will stonewall the investigation or that there's nothing there to find. No matter what the outcome, it's not reflecting well on the local Tories. This is the second scandal attached to them, the first being the Ward 10 vote fiasco. If this were happening to a Liberal or New Democrat in this province, the media would be screaming for heads, but alas, no. It's more than likely that if there was any wrong doing, it'll be buried at the request of the MIA-MLA himself and we'll never know what really happened.