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.

My Christmas shopping expeditions always start and end the same way. I get in my car, armed with a list and an seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of goodwill for the season. I come home frustrated, cranky and loaded with packages.

A few hours in the mall and my supply of Christmas goodwill evaporates in the face of all the angry drivers and aggressive shoppers.

Honking and swearing are the lingua franca on the roads these days. So is pushing and shoving in the cash register lineups. And every year it gets harder.

It’s possible that it’s my age. Perhaps 40-year-old mothers don’t get the same courteous treatment in the battle for parking spots as attractive twentysomethings. But I suspect there is something much bigger at play here.
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When I moved in, it seemed like a good neighbourhood. The house was high on the hill in sleepy Port Moody.

I got a rude shock when the electrical system crashed.

The electrician said it looked like someone who’d lived in the house before me had rigged the wires to power a grow-op — one whose products would undoubtedly grease the wheels of the criminal gangs who run the marijuana business in B.C.

A few months later, my front lawn got chewed up by a truck careening down the street. It crashed through a house nearby.

When police arrived, they found a house full of pot. Apparently, my neighbour was in the “drying” business. He took the pot from the grow-ops and dried it out before it hit the streets — again courtesy of B.C.’s organized gangs.

Shortly after, another neighbour brought home his new pit bulls. They matched nicely with his white Escalade, and I’m sure they made him feel safe in his million-dollar home with the video-surveillance system over his front door.

He seemed like a nice guy to me. He helped a bit with building my fence. His sister and brother-in-law who shared the house were great; they all came to my neighbourhood Christmas party.

He was also one of the two men in the Mercedes that got shot up at 70th and Granville last week. Police say my ex-neighbour wasn’t the target — his passenger, a known gang member — was the one the killers were after.
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My mail bag is full of notes from readers who think politicians are corrupt, self-interested liars. I guess we all need someone to blame for the things that go wrong in our lives. Politicians make a perfect target.

But, during almost 10 years in elected politics, I didn’t meet many politicians who got into it to enrich themselves. I’ve met lots who’ve made stupid mistakes, and even more with kooky ideas. And I’ve seen a few who are hopelessly incompetent, but not many who are corrupt.

Mostly that’s because politics attracts people who are there for the right reasons.

And for those who are there for the wrong ones, there are enough rules to make sure they get caught.
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The Parti Quebecois is proposing that newcomers to Quebec be required to prove that they can speak French before they are allowed some basic rights.

In the PQ’s world, “newcomers” would include Canadians from other provinces.

It has introduced a bill that would have the government set out a standard for basic language proficiency.

Those who meet it would get full rights and be granted “Quebec citizenship.” Those who don’t would be treated as second-class citizens.
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