| CJSW offered loan to help with new office
An anonymous individual has offered to loan CJSW $250,000 to help the non-profit campus and community radio station move into a new office.
CJSW has been in talks with the University of Calgary Students’ Union (SU) to build a new office on the third floor of the old Mac Hall. However, the move has been delayed because the two parties haven’t been able to reach an agreement on construction costs. In January, the SU came to CJSW with a projected cost of $1 million for the new office. CJSW refused to give the SU the go ahead for the project because station manager Chad Saunders says it wanted more information and didn’t have enough money. The station only had $700,000.
Saunders says the new loan "allows us a little more flexibility in exploring what the options are."
"It would certainly allow us to get the space complete. It wouldn’t allow us to totally furbish it," he says.
Saunders says negotiations between CJSW and the SU are ongoing and no deal has yet been signed. CJSW has been planning and fundraising for the move for several years.
Alberta Liberals call on feds to keep national child care program
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced that his party will move ahead with its own child-care program and will scrap the Liberal’s national day-care program in a year.
Harper says he will try to get legislation passed this spring that would allow the federal government to give parents $1,200 per year for each child under the age of six. However, he says at the end of the 2006-07 fiscal year, the Conservatives will eliminate the national day-care plan the former Liberal government negotiated with each province in 2005.
Liberal MLA Weslyn Mather says she’s concerned about how this affects Alberta.
Alberta and the former Liberal government signed a five-year agreement that would have seen the province receive $500 million over five years.
Jody Korchinski, spokesperson for Alberta Children’s Services, says the money allowed the government to increase subsidies for low-income parents and to provide subsidies to top up the wages of day-care staff.
"At this point it’s too early to speculate on what the impact will be," says Korchinski. "The minister looks forward to having a chat with her federal counterpart to discuss what the future holds."
However, Mather says she’s hopeful the Conservative government won’t scrap the agreement.
"My feeling is that families in Alberta need to be reassured that adequate child-care help is going to be there and will continue. I know that it made a tremendous difference in some lives of families in this province when that agreement came through, so our hope is we’re going to be able to keep the status quo," she says.
Jeff Pender, spokesperson for the federal Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, says the Conservative day-care plan will involve more than just the $1,200 allowance for children under the age of six, but he says the details will be unveiled in the upcoming parliamentary session. He says it shouldn’t be a surprise to Canadians that the Conservatives are moving forward with their own plan.
"I can say it was a pretty clear electoral plank in the campaign and the public endorsed it when they voted for it," he says.
Liberals calling for new land use strategy
The Alberta Liberals are calling on the provincial government to create a new land use strategy that balances protection of the environment with resource extraction, protects prime agricultural land and combats the negative impacts of urban sprawl.
The Liberals have released a discussion paper on the need for a new strategy, which was put together after consultation with industry, environmental groups and municipal governments. It argues that Alberta has to move away from unplanned, unco-ordinated growth and come up with a plan for sustainable growth. The report argues that Alberta should look at the kind of land use planning underway in Washington state, British Columbia and Ontario, where governments have decided to take control of how growth is occurring to protect the environment and maintain a high quality of life. |
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