How are you coping with GAWS?
Many people deal with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) during the winter months. Here in B.C., we've got GAWS - Government Advertising Withdrawal Syndrome.
GAWS started to take hold in B.C. a couple of weeks ago, as the provincial government abruptly cut off all "partisan" government advertising four months prior to this May's provincial election, as promised.
Then again, they also promised they wouldn't spend a bunch of money buying advertising to let us know how well they were doing in the first place. But never mind that.
GAWS appears to have a very positive initial effect on most people: trips to the post office become easier without those "progress reports" from the government. Your favourite TV show becomes a lot easier to take without having to watch those annoying "Best Place on Earth" ads. A certain sense of euphoria sets in, even.
Then, as the government stops buying advertising and starts buying publicity, in the form of funding announcements, you start to wonder if the advertising might have been cheaper after all. This week, education got a $150-million shot in the arm, while legal aid got an extra $4 million to grow on and services for women facing violence got another $12.5 million. Next week, look for seniors, girl scouts and puppies to all receive major funding increases if the trend continues.
It's hard to argue with "good news" funding announcements: who isn't in favour of more money for schools, legal aid for the less fortunate or battered women?
Soon, however, you start to wonder: say, isn't this just a portion of the money they've already cut from these programs in the past three and a half years? Perhaps not in education, where government has largely held the line (which equates to funding cuts given inflation), but the legal aid cut is giving back $4 million out of $34 million cut in recent years, and the funding to violence against women doesn't add up to what was saved out of cutting funding to women's centres.
We could wish this was the repentant action of a government that's seen where its well-intentioned plan of cutting spending went too deep. Sadly, it's just a government trying to buy good PR on the news pages instead of on the ads beside them.
In the end, GAWS is yet another depressing winter syndrome. Thank goodness it only comes once every few years - or so we hope.
