Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Feb 27/02) - If a committee of MLAs has its way, $250,000 in funding for a history project spearheaded by Marie Wilson, the premier's wife, will be put on hold.

Marie Wilson: "I should be allowed to have a good idea. I've had one or two before." - NNSL file photo

"We don't think the proper process has been followed," said Yellowknife MLA Charles Dent, chair of the committee.

The committee recommended the funding for the project, which was organized by the Living History Society, be removed from the 2002-03 budget. The committee cited a lack of detail on the project, the apparent absence of a formal funding proposal and the exclusion of the grant from the processes used to assess other grants.

The history project, called Back to the Future 2002, is to include a video and symposium examining the evolution of the NWT over the last 25 years. The project was initiated by Wilson. She has also been paid some money under contract to DIAND for developing the project.

"If you're asking me if I got some big fat contract, the answer is no," Wilson said.

Wilson went on to say she and her group had been advised by cabinet secretary Elizabeth Snider to deal with the deputy-Premier's office on their funding request. "We're trying to do very big things," she said. "I should be allowed to have a good idea. I've had one or two before."

Finance Minister Joe Handley, to whom Kakfwi referred questions about the grant, said only $100,000 is earmarked for the Living History Society. Wilson is a director of the society and its driving force, according to the society's co-chair John Bekale.

Kakfwi stays out of discussion

Handley said Kakfwi has excused himself from all cabinet discussions of the grant.

Of the remaining funds requested, $100,000 is for security and $50,000 for protocol if Governor General Adrienne Clarkson accepts an invitation to attend the symposium scheduled for this June. Handley emphasized that money will be handled by the government, not the society. The government provided $40,000 in start-up funding for the project this fiscal year.

Bekale said Wilson's further involvement will be determined at full-day workshop of the society this Friday. He said the society sought legal advice in trying to develop an understanding of how Wilson's involvement will be limited by her relationship with the premier. When Kakfwi became premier, Wilson had to give up her job as head of CBC North because of corporate conflict-of-interest rules.

$500,000 originally requested

The committee of MLAs also took exception to the grant being channelled through aboriginal affairs -- part of the Department of the Executive -- rather than Education, Culture and Employment, the department that usually funds such projects.

"They didn't have to compete with everybody else in the territories for funding for cultural and historical projects," Dent said.

Handley said it was a "toss-up" as to which department would have been appropriate to handle the grant.

Following initial criticism from MLAs, the government halved the amount for the project from an original request of $500,000. Information on what the other $250,000 in the initial proposal was to be spent on was not available by deadline. The government was also unable to say how much, if any, money was spent on security when the Governor General visited the NWT two years ago.

Public review of the grant and the rest of the executive's budget will likely happen later this week.