2006 Budget Recap

I know things have been a bit slow around here lately. I've been travelling a lot, and busy at work, but I think things should clear up a bit soon.

I did want to recap last week's federal budget, as it deals with amateur sport in Canada. As my patrons at CanSport have already pointed out, the Harper government didn't fulfil its campaign promise to increase funding for sport to one percent of the health care budget.

In fact, things went just about as I predicted the night before the budget. Although I haven't figured out what the total allocation is, the conservatives didn't dramatically increase the budget for sport. They did introduce a number of tax breaks, including one for parents who register their children in organized sports, and one for people who donate securities to non-profit organizations. On the question of infrastructure, the conservatives didn't make any committments, and wouldn't even grant Vancouver's request for more funding for the 2010 Olympics. That's not an encouraging sign for infrastructure.

Locally, the new premier of Nova Scotia — a former gym teacher — delivered his first Throne Speech last week and promised to make physical education mandatory in high school. I took PE in grade 10 and I remember it as a year filled with Dodgeball and Kickball (which we called soccer baseball in my neighbourhood). I don't think it did much for my physical fitness.