NEWS: Arts groups, non-profits bracing for post-Olympic budget

With the Olympics set to hold the city’s attention for the next three weeks, the announcement of the provincial government’s 2010-2011 budget on March 2 will mark a swift return to reality. The Province’s widely-disputed freeze of funding for gaming grants — grants raised from provincial gambling revenues to fund not-for-profit and charity organizations — galvanized thousands of citizens, in particular members of the arts and culture community, who spoke out against the cuts in summer and fall 2009. Despite a November 2009 recommendation from the Province’s own Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services that recommended arts funding be restored to 2008-2009 levels in the upcoming budget, affected groups are preparing for the worst.

In anticipation of the provincial budget announcement, the B.C. Association for Charitable Gaming (BCACG) has obtained legal opinion from Vancouver lawyer Cameron Ward. In a Feb. 3 media release issued by BCACG, a statement from Ward says BCACG and the charitable organizations it represents have grounds to take legal action against the Province to seek restoration of gaming funds to appropriate levels. Failure to do so would violate the provincial government’s June 1999 Memorandum of Agreement, which committed one-third of casino revenues, indexed to inflation, to charities and non-government organizations.

“If this next budget on March 2 doesn’t address the issue, then the only option is either to say, ‘Well, I guess our society is changing,’ or to try and address it in a legal way,” says BCACG president Susan Marsden of her decision to seek legal opinion. She and the BCACG started consulting lawyers last fall when she felt the provincial government wasn’t responding to opposition to the cuts. “Our position was, it didn’t have discretion over this section of the gaming profits that has traditionally gone to charities,” she says, “because that had been entrenched in policy and practice for a long time.”

Given the widespread public protests against the cuts and torrent of letters written to MLAs in support of restoring gaming grants, public opinion supporting funding restoration is clear, Marsden says. “Nobody can say that every effort hasn’t been made to make the government aware of how devastating these cuts are across the board,” she says. “I do feel personally that the Olympics is one of the reasons that we have experienced all the cuts. It is amazing that you can basically devastate a sector and then turn around and try and celebrate it during the [Games].”

Amir Ali Alibhai, executive director of the Alliance for Arts and Culture, says he hopes the Cultural Olympiad will showcase what can be achieved with funding for the arts. “It’s an example of what actually quite a modest amount of investment from different levels of government... can create,” he says.

Alibhai emphasizes that gambling in the province has been expanded over the years with good-faith support from the charitable and not-for-profit sector, based on the understanding that gaming revenues would support their operation. “Otherwise, I don’t believe that many of the charities and cities and communities around the province would have ever considered allowing gaming to be expanded in their communities,” he says. “It is on that basis that I believe this social and moral contract is being broken, and the courts may agree.”

A representative of the B.C. Ministry of Housing and Social Development, which oversees community gaming grant funding for charitable and not-for-profit organizations, told WE that close to $115 million has been provided for community gaming grants for 2009/2010 as of January this year. As well, close to 5,000 grant applications have been approved, and $4.3 million in BC Arts Council grants will be distributed in early February 2010. The representative, who requested not to be named in this article, noted that “difficult decisions” were made last year, and priorities went to high-need services.