My experience in government at a time when we were also fighting a monstrous deficit, was that every single cut is painful. Every cut meant withdrawing a program that someone had gotten very attached to.
The trick with cutbacks is to find places to cut that will have the fewest negative impacts and garner the least political blowback. Not an easy task.
This round of cutbacks is hitting the usual suspects: school boards, the Ministry of the Environment, and communications people, to name a few. But there is one area that’s getting slashed that, it seems to me, is going to cause the government no end of political heartache. Those are the cuts to charity gaming grants announced by Rich Coleman.
First, there’s little question that the small amounts of money that goes to fund the hundreds of community groups around BC is mostly very well spent. Helping kids get involved in organized sports for example, lowers costs to health care down the line. But it’s equally true that investing in kids sports programs can literally turn lives around, especially for kids who might have otherwise turned to crime. I spoke this week to two men who said that youth soccer saved their lives â?” while their friends were out breaking into cars, they were going to bed early so they could be up for games the next day. Now, instead of doing time in jail, they’re putting bad guys in jail: they both went into law enforcement.
But the cuts to the gaming grants don’t just affect children’s sports. Yes, over the coming weeks, parents will be getting phone calls from their local soccer association telling them that they’ll have to stand in the rain for every practice this winter because the government cut their $4,000 grant and they can’t afford to rent gym space anymore. But they won’t be the only ones. Volunteers who help with the boy scouts camp will learn that they won’t be needed because there’s no camp this year. The good people who rely on the hospice will find out that some of the programs they used to have to support people wishing to die with dignity, won’t be back next year because they’ve lost their grant too.
My point is that, unlike cuts to government ministries, these cuts happen very close to home. All of them feel very personal to the people who give up hundreds of hours of their time to volunteer in their local community. I predict that just about every one of those people is going to visit their MLA with an indignant demand that their grant be restored. These are the people who volunteer, who write letters to the editor, these are the people who are most likely to vote.
Watch for the cuts to charity gaming grants to be restored. Don’t be surprised that after weeks of getting an earful from all those professional volunteers out there, Rich Coleman folds like a cheap tent. And I say, the sooner he gets it over with, the better.
I did a segment today on my show at 12:35pm today supporting a junk food tax. I’m all for it as long as government keeps the revenues in a fund dedicated to health promotion and illness prevention. I heard tons of support from listeners and THEN…heard… that Obama came out in support of it 2 HOURS after I did my editorial. Coincidence????
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