Promises made and not kept

The government's sleight of hand doesn't fool charities
By Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun


Wednesday's press conference to announce the government's response to the Community Gaming Grant Review was held, of all places, in the Port Moody Arts Centre, which surely had nothing to do with an upcoming byelection there.

Premier Christy Clark was there to do the honours, with Cultural Development Minister Ida Chong appearing as head spear carrier.

This was to be a good news announcement - thus the attendance of Clark, her smile set on high beam, it being the only illumination these days in the Liberal gloom.

At hand was what to do about past cuts to B.C. charities and non-profits. "Cuts" would be one way to describe it. A better word would be "looting." For the last decade, the provincial government has systematically wrested control of gaming grants away from charities and non-profits - the proceeds of which came from the province's gambling industry. The reason was greed. Gambling became the government's cash cow.

Funding to the charities slowed. And when tough times arrived, the province cut back further. Grants fell to levels not seen since the 1990s. In 2008, they totalled $156 million; by 2009, they had fallen to $112 million.

At the same time, the government tightened rules for eligibility.

Of B.C.'s 6,800 registered charities and non-profits, some 1,500 lost their funding entirely. Those that remained suffered big cuts to their budgets. All service organizations, for example, lost 50 per cent of their grants.

Ugliness ensued. The B.C. Association for Charitable Gaming (BCACG) mounted a campaign against the cuts, which in turn led to the high profile and improbably successful fight against an expanded casino planned for the newly renovated BC Place Stadium.

It was another humiliation for the Liberals. Clark, in a move designed to symbolize her new, sunnier premiership, ordered a one-time bump to the gaming grants, bringing the total for 2010-2011 up to $135 million. The government then ordered the gaming grant review.

Which brings us to Port Moody Wednesday afternoon.

The good news, such as it was, was that the government would "increase" the grant total to $135 million, and that it would be funded at that level for at least the next three years in the government's budget.

Words are a wonderful thing, and so is math, but to me, raising grant levels to $135 million from last year's $135 million does not constitute an "increase." It constitutes bafflegab.

"Can't anybody do the math?" wondered BCACG director Susan Marsden. "They're rein-stating $135 million? Even if you saw that as an increase, it's still $21 million short of the 2008 funding levels of $156 mil-lion, not including four years of inflation."

And the promise that those levels would be maintained for the next three years, Marsden said, was not what her organization wanted. It wanted a recognition from Clark that charities and non-profits had a right to a guaranteed percentage of gambling revenue, as they were originally promised.

But since Clark placed funding for charities within the government budget, rather than dedicating a fixed percentage of gaming revenue to fund charities in perpetuity, the funding is still at the government's discretion. Budgets change, and what the government giveth, the government can taketh away. And that, Marsden said, leaves charities and non-profits in the same predicament three years down the road.

In Alberta, charities and non-profits don't have that problem. There, they receive a fixed percentage of all gambling revenue. According to the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission report on charitable gambling for 2009-10, $323 million in gambling revenues were distributed to non-profit groups. That's over $210 million more than B.C. charities received in the same fiscal year.

But there's more. Or rather, there's less.

At Wednesday's event, Clark announced that all those charities and non-profits that had been stripped of their eligibility would now once again be eligible, and would be able to reap-ply for funding.

But the last time those charities had been eligible, the funding level had been $156 million, not $135 million. And there had been 6,800 charities receiving funds, not 5,300.

So, if those formerly ineligible charities apply for funding, there will be that many more charities - as many as 1,500 more - fighting over a much smaller pie.

Once again, the math isn't pretty.

Said Sandy Garossino, who headed the BCACG campaign to stop the downtown casino: "If you've got more charities looking for more funding, there will be less to go around for everybody. This will probably mean across-the-board cuts even for those charities that were always protected."

On the other hand, something is better than nothing. A guarantee of $135 million for the next three years is better than further cuts and more uncertainty. And you can't blame Clark for trying to sell this as good news. She inherited this problem, and recognized the ugly optics. Even in the face of a tight budget, $135 million buys some goodwill.

But let's recognize it for what it is:

Penance.



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