Adult sports and arts groups, environmental and animal welfare agencies will once again be eligible to apply for grants from the B.C. government’s gambling revenues.
Those groups were made ineligible after the government cut the budget for community grants following the recession of 2008. They can again apply for grants, but the total fund remains at $135 million, where it was set by Premier Christy Clark last year.
Shortly after taking over as premier, Clark restored $15 million of the $36 million that was cut from the fund, and appointed former Kwantlen University president Skip Triplett to hold hearings around the province. On Wednesday, Clark announced that the increased funding would be permanent, though the B.C. Association for Charitable Gaming as well as local community groups have concerns that it still falls well below 2008 levels.
Clark and Community, Sport and Cultural Development Minister Ida Chong released Triplett’s report Wednesday, and promised to keep working on a way to provide multi-year funding for community groups instead of making them apply every year for grants.
Clark said the financial pressure on the B.C. government made it difficult to maintain the grant budget at $135 million, and did not allow restoring it to its 2008 peak of $156 million.
Wendy Weisner said she commends Clark for bringing the fund back up to $135 million, but said more could and should be done.
“While gaming revenues continue to increase, grants to non-profits have decreased,” said Weisner, who works for the South Okanagan Volunteer Centre. That group recently sent a letter to Clark detailing concerns with how gaming grants are handled, funding levels and questioning why the B.C. Lottery Corp. does advertising for casinos.
“Why don’t they take the B.C. Lotteries advertising budget and parcel that out to non-profits and let the casinos advertise for themselves?” said Weisner, noting that gaming brings in revenues of more than $1 billion each year.
The announcement also reverses decisions made by former minister Rich Coleman in March 2010 to focus grants on organizations helping youth and disabled people.
Penticton Art Gallery curator Paul Crawford said the announcement couldn’t have come at a better time. The gallery was lucky enough to be on a three-year contract for its gaming grant when the cuts came in 2009. But that funding cycle, which amounted to $40,000 per year, has just ended.
“It was a huge cloud hanging over us. It’s a considerable chunk of our annual budget, and the money goes mostly to programming,” said Crawford. “It would certainly change things dramatically for us if we were not able to get that money.”
NDP critic Shane Simpson said Wednesday that Triplett’s effort to hear from community groups was sincere, but Clark has essentially ignored it.
“[Clark] has expanded the eligibility, but not increased the size of the pot, so there will essentially be more groups looking for a smaller pot of money,” Simpson said.
While he is happy the gallery should continue to be eligible for grants, Crawford admits that more groups going after the same money will make the process more competitive.
“The devil will be in the details. It will be interesting to see what will come out of that — to see what they will actually fund and how different that will be from what we were getting funded for previously,” he said. “For us, in some ways, barring any drastic change, it could be just good timing all around.”