Since winning the May election, the provincial government has been steadily cutting public services, often without any public announcement. These cuts affect services ranging from the arts to seniors’ care to public schools. They will be particularly hard on the most vulnerable members of our society.
In the absence of comprehensive information from the provincial government about exactly what programs and services will be reduced or eliminated, the CCPA is documenting the cuts and their impact. We need your help to do this!
If a program, organization or service is being cut in your community, comment here or let us know by sending a message to cuts@policyalternatives.ca. And feel free to include details or a quote about how the cuts will affect you, your family or others in your community. The more information we have, the better we can raise awareness about the damage that the cuts will do, and offer an alternative plan for our province.
Brian Nicol // Sep 17, 2009 at 2:12 pm
First of all, let me state that I have been a supporter of this government in the past, but I have been feeling a growing sense of betrayal in the past months. I am not an artist, but I have many friends who make their living in the arts. I do not know how some of these folks are going to continue doing what they do.
My biggest concern is how do we get the message out to a greater audience? Policy Note, The Straight, Tyee and others are doing a great job addressing the issues of the cuts, but this message is not getting past those affected. I had a discussion with a conservative friend the other day, and he actually said “why should I have to pay to support some artist leading the lives they have become accustomed to?” Accustomed to what?? Living in a basement suite? Constantly facing poverty? Working at a minimum wage job during the day so they can pursue their passion? How do we get the message out to people who would never read Policy Note, or pick up a progressive paper? These are the people who need to see the impact these cuts have on our society as a whole.
Gary Edwards // Sep 18, 2009 at 6:35 am
In the 100 Mile House area they are systematically shutting down the Hospital.
First they closed the maternity ward saying that the couldn’t get nurses. I have since found out they cut off the money for maternity trained nurses.
Then they started shutting down the Emergency Room .
And now they are shutting down the OR.
This is all due to a cut back in funding to health care.
Keith Reynolds // Sep 21, 2009 at 10:42 am
The City of Vancouver and the Vancouver School Board have both done an analysis of the impact of the provincial budget update at the following:
http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20090922/documents/a7.pdf
Me // Sep 23, 2009 at 9:31 pm
The province has cut 100% of the funding to two crucial area of public libraries:
1) Funding for online resources that gave citizens across the province access to high quality research material, physician-vetted health information, information about BC’s laws and regulations, magazine articles, newspaper archives, auto repair information, world book encyclopedia for children, BC statistics and more. Large municipalities are now scrambling to cover the expenses and smaller towns are likely going to be doing without.
2) Funding for an online service that allowed citizens to get professional assistance from anywhere in the province when doing research.
These programs were two of the big equalizers that allowed citizens to access high quality information regardless of where they lived in the province. The resources and services were used for school children to get help with their homework assignments, for people to prepare for job search, for new entrepreneurs to locate important market information and build business plans, for finding health information from a trusted source, and much much more.