Something for nothing

Lord knows this province depends on its volunteers. And those volunteers are driven.

Take 58-year-old Robert Fisher — from May 31 to June 13, he walked 459 kilometres from Confederation Building to Northern Arm, raising just over $6,300 to help finance the purchase of a fire truck and renovations to the volunteer department’s fire hall. The truck that the fire department is trying to replace? A converted 1968 fuel truck — not a dependable vehicle at this point, despite the fire department’s best efforts.

“We’re not sure if it’s going to go. It gives a false sense of security,”  town clerk/manager Ella Humphries told The Telegram.

And Robert Fisher is just one of thousands of volunteers who do everything from fighting fires, to making emergency medical calls, to helping seniors — the list is almost endless, and if the provincial government were paying for even a fraction of the services involved, it would cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Simply put, out of the goodness of their hearts, volunteers have taken on so many responsibilities that we could not afford to replace them.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that under the wing of the provincial Department of Intergovernmental Affairs, the province has a small office called the Voluntary and Non-Profit Secretariat.

Its purpose is to “strengthen the relationship between government and the voluntary and non-profit sector, promote volunteerism and social enterprise, enhance the capacity of the sector and facilitate the development of provincial programs/policies to support the sector,” according to the province’s budget documents.

The office has a budget just over $1 million, and four full-time employees. The price tag of the salaries for those four, according to the provincial budget? $423,500, led by a deputy-minister earning $156,910 a year.

Now, it’s certainly important to recognize the contributions of volunteers, and to, as Denine will do on Monday, find ways to celebrate and promote volunteerism.

But the money used to run the secretariat is the equivalent of funding 166 Robert Fishers — it’s money that, on the ground, would buy fire hoses and supplies for Meals on Wheels, that would help train search and rescue volunteers or help support and educate volunteer municipal councillors. It’s money that could be a clear investment in a service the province gets for free.

While it’s easy to understand why the province would want — in the relatively bureaucratic terminology of the secretariat’s business plan — to “build capacity” in the volunteer sector, it’s a little harder to understand why more of the money can’t find its way to the community organizations that so desperately need the money, especially when aging and failing equipment and support services make it harder and harder to attract willing volunteers, especially in rural parts of this province, where populations are aging.

Look at Robert Fisher.

Walk a mile in those shoes. That’s volunteerism.