Lottery cuts downright sleazy
The Campbell government’s decision to scoop $10 million in lottery grants in arts-group funding is mean spirited, politically dumb, and disproportionately unfair to rural British Columbia. Putting it as delicately as I can, those cuts are a downright sleazy way to treat an enormously talented and productive group of citizens. Measuring the cuts on an applicant basis, last year 840 culture group applications were approved for funding, this year it’s 350.
The majority of Gordon Campbell’s budget measures have made sense. The income tax cuts in 2001, the carbon tax in 2007, and his harmonized sales tax destined for 2010. In spite of considerable opposition, those initiatives have been – or in the case of HST, will be – beneficial. The multi-million hit to the arts is not.
As Vancouver Sun business writer Harvey Enchin wrote in a recent article, “The arts community claims that for every $1 invested in the arts, payback to the province is $1.38.” I have no reason to doubt Enchin or the calculations of the arts community.
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