Summerside group reassures veterans federal funding wasn't taken by former executive director
CBC
A Summerside group is doing its best to reassure veterans and their families that federal money it was administering is safe after its former executive director was charged with stealing funds.
Barb Gallant, who is also a Summerside city councillor, is a former executive director of the Lest We Forget Veterans Committee. She was charged by Summerside police in mid-April with theft over $5,000 in connection to the group.
The committee's current president, Nancy Beth Guptill, said she heard concerns from veterans across the country after the news broke.
Guptill said $400,000 the group received from Veterans Affairs Canada in 2022 is still being used to benefit veterans.
"[The funding is] being managed by the East Prince Women's Information Centre, and we have a project evaluator that ensures that we track the money, everything is safe, and we also have an accountant that oversees everything," Guptill said.
Federal Veterans Affairs Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor says she's not privy to details of the case.
She told CBC News she's been reassured none of the federal funding was taken.
"We certainly have followed up with the organization as we wanted to ensure that our money was not the money that was impacted," she told CBC News.
Petitpas Taylor says the department takes this very seriously, and followups will ensure something like this doesn't happen again.
"These are, you know, federal dollars. They're your dollars, and we want to make sure that they're properly invested and those checks and balances are in place," she said.
Guptill says just $3,000 of the federal money was deposited into the account that is the subject of the charge, and that Gallant had access to. The account also contained funds that had been accumulated through sponsorships and donations.
In all, it should have totalled more than $10,000. Instead, the committee found the account was in overdraft.
Guptill says she can only assume that the $3,000 from the federal funding that went into the account was used for what it was supposed to be used for, establishing a memorial bench.
"Anything that money was budgeted for, was paid," she said.
Just as Alberta begins to dig out from its last winter storm, most of the province is preparing for another blast of snow and brutal cold, just in time for the holidays.
The B.C. Conservative candidate for the Surrey-Guildford riding in the 2024 provincial election, which was narrowly won by the B.C. NDP, has now abandoned a lawsuit that sought to invalidate that result.
A new suite will soon be available for the families of patients receiving care at P.E.I.'s Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
TTC ridership was lower than expected this past fall despite a push by some employers to bring employees back into the office, according to a TTC draft budget document.
Extreme cold is drawing near the prospect of rolling blackouts in Whitehorse.
Egmont MP Bobby Morrissey says federal help for Prince Edward Island's struggling oyster fishery is expected early in the new year.
Calgary police have charged a man with defrauding numerous seniors out of about $186,000 in a string of incidents over a five-week period.
A Brampton lawyer allegedly connected to fugitive Ryan Wedding was granted bail Tuesday morning by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
Rankin Inlet hamlet councillors recently passed a motion that has had them avoid drinking alcohol for the 12 days leading up to Christmas, with the goal of setting a positive example for the community.
Jason Jacques says he learned a lot about the importance of choosing his words carefully in his first few months as the interim parliamentary budget officer (PBO).
Durham police say a man is dead after suffering multiple stab wounds in Oshawa Tuesday morning.
An internal review of technical outages that caused significant delays at airports and international land borders this fall has exposed critical flaws with the Canada Border Services Agency's IT services.
Two people are in life-threatening condition after being pulled from a house fire in Scarborough Tuesday morning, according to Toronto Fire Services.