Veterans apartment eligible for bingo money after all

Provincial officials acknowledge rejecting donation was a mistake

The Alberta government will allow an Edmonton charity to donate bingo money to an apartment for veterans and their families after the group asked the province to reconsider its earlier rejection of the plan.

Finance Minister Doug Horner delivered the news to the Strathcona Ladies’ Auxiliary Friday morning at a meeting scheduled after the group went public with its frustrations over efforts to donate money to Veterans Villa.

“They discovered that they made mistake,” said Linda Trewin, the Ladies’ Auxiliary’s past-president, who has been fighting the original decision for months.

The complex near Southgate Mall, which serves veterans and their families, needs $100,000 to finish repairing the three-storey building’s elevator. The facility, operated by a non-profit company, also needs to replace its carpets.

But the Ladies’ Auxiliary’s plans to donate $10,000 to Veterans Villa were rejected earlier this year by the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission. It must approve any plans by a charity that wants to donate more than $5,000 raised through gaming revenue to another organization.

The group previously had donated about $2,000 a year, earned by volunteering at bingos, to Veterans Villa for at least a decade.

Trewin said she was excited and caught off guard by Horner’s decision. “I thought they would say, ‘No. Rules are rules,’ ” she said.

But Horner told Trewin almost as soon as she entered the room that she was right. “He was glad I had fought it,” said Trewin, who will present the cheque to Veterans Villa next Wednesday.

Horner, whose portfolio includes the AGLC, asked commission officials to review the file again after the Ladies’ Auxiliary raised concerns, spokeswoman Robyn Cochrane said. After reviewing the paperwork, Cochrane said the AGLC realized that the donation to the apartment complex is permitted.

“It turns out the Veterans Villa is owned by a not-forprofit, which under the existing rules makes it eligible,” Cochrane said. “The person doing the application assumed it was not owned by a not-for profit. Certain assumptions were made. In fact, as in past years, this year they do qualify for the funding to go to the veterans.”

Horner shared that information with Trewin on Friday, Cochrane said.

Horner also has asked the AGLC to look at what happens when it says “no” to a charity’s spending request to make sure there are better checks and balances in place before a spending pitch is rejected.

Money distributed by the AGLC to charities that volunteer at bingos or casinos is critical to many non-profit sports, school, parent and community groups in Alberta.

“He wants a standard set of rules, but to make sure it makes sense in the context of the charities we have in this province,” Cochrane said. “We have over 13,000 charities. There have to some kind of consistency and standards between those, but he wants to make sure for the kinds of charities that we have in the province today that the rules make sense.”

NDP Leader Brian Mason, who wrote a letter to Horner asking him to reconsider the earlier ruling, said he was pleased the “feisty work” of the Ladies’ Auxiliary paid off.