Gaming grants should be immune from cash grabs

Fairness is a balancing act for governments, a notion that takes into account fiscal responsibility and political popularity.

But the province’s plan to further reduce the amount of gaming money it passes along to non-profit groups in the form of grants goes over the line.

The move would be almost defensible if it was simply a case of tax revenues being lower than expected and government redirecting tax money to higher priority programs.

But in this case, the province is, for the most part, not affecting programs funded by tax dollars.

Gaming revenues come from after-tax dollars, money leftover in people’s pockets after the government has siphoned off what it feels it needs to run the province.

The revenue from gaming in this province has risen steadily over the past decade, to the point where it is now a billion-dollar industry.

To take an even bigger slice of that cash-cow, after-tax revenue source, especially when it was intended to help cover social, cultural, sporting and arts endeavours in B.C., is not only unfair, it borders on immoral.

What it means for groups such as school parent advisory councils, arts organizations, youth sports leagues, etc. is they’ll have to do far more fundraising than before to maintain their level of activity. Given that situation, enthusiastic volunteers with specific interests may be less likely to step up, with a greater expectation to raise money. Those on board may get burned out, feeling they didn’t sign up to be professional fundraisers.

One example of the pain this could cause is the recently announced drop in gaming grants to $10 per student for school parent advisory councils – they were set at $20 in 2002 and haven’t changed since. Halving the funding will decimate the amount of classroom and extra-curricular materials purchased by PACs. Not so ironically, PACs took on that role due to a lack of funding available from school districts.

And guess who they get their money from?