Viewpoint
By Paul Jurbala

On April 1, 1996 amateur sport in Ontario hits the wall. That's the
first day of the new fiscal year for 82 not-for-profit provincial sport
governing bodies, including the Ontario Water Ski Association (OWSA).
It's the day after the 1995/6 grant support from the Ministry of
Citizenship, Culture and Recreation (MCZCR) runs out, and in theory,
the day the 1996/7 support begins. In theory.

In practice, nobody knows what the level of grant support for 1996/7
will be, not even the Ontario government. Although Minister of Finance
Eves announced a 15% additional cut to sport in 1996 in the last
economic statement, Marilyn Mushinski, the Minister of Recreation has
made it clear that:

(a)	15% is the minimum cut, and 
(b)     until MCZCR reviews its priorities,  the way sport is
funded is totally up in the air.

The review process is scheduled to run to the end of April; until then
not even the minister knows how sport will be funded for a fiscal year
which, by that time, will be a month old. Last year, sports did not
receive confirmation of funding until December, nine months into the
fiscal year: all bets are off for when the 96/7 grants will be
announced.

Think like a member of the board of directors. If there was a strong
chance you would lose much or all of a 40% block of your revenue, but
you didn't know how much you might lose, or when you would find out,
how would you plan and budget for the new year?  That's right, you
couldn't. The prudent thing to do would be to reduce operations and
overhead to a skeleton and wait for confirmation. But the 1996 season,
for summer sports like ours, could be over by then.

As a water skier you may or may not care too much about this, but you
should. After all, it's not just water skiing, it's all sport, and in
Ontario 4.5 million adults participate regularly in organized sport.
Recent cuts to municipal funding, plus the effects of 30% cuts to
provincial sport bodies under the NDP and a further 21% (at least, so
far) by the Tories have put the squeeze on sport from both sides, just
like hospitals, schools, and charities. Given the lean-and-mean 90s the
corporate sector isn't wading in with stacks of cash, so there's just
one place left to look- your pockets. You will be asked to pay more for
your children's swim lessons, ice time, soccer league and your own OWSA
membership and ski runs. But while sport participation is progressively
restricted to the wealthy (so much for fitness-related health care
savings, community-building, keeping kids out of shopping malls, etc)
the incipient collapse of many sport organizations means there may not
be a lot of organized sport left. Disorganized sport, yes: but who will
train the instructors and officials, keep the records, maintain the
safety standards?

If the OWSA's cut permits, we'll muddle on, and this message may seem
in retrospect to be unnecessarily alarmist. Still, as I write, sport
associations in the Sport Centre are closing down, and for cash flow
reasons others will do so in the next few months, grant cut or no. And
what is being lost is not just a few more jobs, but an infrastructure
you have paid for with your tax dollars for some twenty years, in the
expectation it would serve you for years to come. If you agree with the
government that cuts must come from all tax-supported sectors, the only
decision is whether it is economically sound for you to pay more to
maintain your participation. If you don't agree, phone, write or fax
your MPP, the Minister of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation and the
Premier.