Terry Wickham, the producer of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, said he is baffled his event was denied funding under a federal stimulus program. (CBC)

The producer of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival is upset that the event was denied funding from a $100-million federal stimulus program when smaller festivals in Calgary and Winnipeg received hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"I'm just baffled," Terry Wickham said. "I don't think people know how good this festival is."

The Marquee Tourism Events program is giving $291,375 to the Calgary Folk Music Festival and $363,256 to the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Wickham learned his application for funding was turned down via a letter he received on Wednesday morning.

"If it's about tourism, surely we do more tourism than … a rodeo in Cloverdale, in Surrey, B.C." he added referring to the Cloverdale Rodeo and Country Fair, which will get $345,900 from the fund.

However, Edmonton wasn't completely shut out of funding. The Edmonton International Fringe Festival received $414,300 and the Rexall Edmonton Indy received $399,314.

A total of 154 proposals were made for funding, but only 37 were accepted, said Laurie Hawn, the Conservative MP for Edmonton Centre. This was only the first round of the two-year program, and Hawn encouraged the Folk Fest to try again next year.

"Simple fact is $100 million over two years is a lot of money, but when you spread that across the country and with all the great festivals that we have across the country, you know, clearly there are going to be some people who don't get … the nod."

The Edmonton Folk Festival does gets some federal money — $100,000 each year from Heritage Canada, Hawn said.

"You can pick and play with numbers any way you like," Hawn said. "The fact is, it's a fair process. It's a process that's oversubscribed, so there's always going to be people who are going to wind up disappointed."

Government bureaucrats, not politicians, evaluated the applications based on specific criteria, Hawn added.

But Wickham said other festivals that received money from the Marquee program also get money from Heritage Canada, which he says is also handed out unfairly.

"We also get … 20 to 30 per cent less [Heritage] funding than the Calgary Folk Festival, and we're almost twice as big," he said.

The Calgary Stampede, Ottawa Bluesfest, Montreal Jazz Festival and the Stratford and Shaw festivals are among the events also receiving funding from the program this year.

The 2009 version of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival started Thursday. Sarah McLachlan headlined a pre-festival fundraising concert at the site Wednesday night.