While friends in the arts lose jobs because of the withdrawal of Direct Access funding, The Province newspaper reports today that $2.86 million will be made available to “celebrate the 2010 Olympic Torch Relay”.

Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts, Kevin Krueger, said the funds are being released so communities can prepare to "welcome this exciting international event into their neighbourhoods."

The money will be for cultural celebrations and performances as part of the relay festival, including:

• 50 "Celebration Communities," which will host events twice a day in the afternoon and evening as the relay continues; and
• 218 "Route Communities," which will see the torch for briefer pit stops along the way, 50 of which will be at aboriginal communities and will feature a "keeper of the flame" ceremony of elders.

In a related article, also in the Province, Rich Coleman, Minister for Housing and Social Development, explained how the Government, because of the current economic mess the province is in, was forced to make difficult decisions and that grants to arts organizations lost out to “higher priorities”.

“It was not an easy decision on some of these things,” Coleman was quoted from a Global News interview. “When you think about a child arriving in school with an empty stomach that isn’t going to get the education they require, you have to decide, ‘Is that a priority, or some other thing?’

“You make the decision on behalf of the child.”

I guess that child is less important than a parade.

And that parades are more vital to the economy than people's jobs.