Welcome to federal budget day, everybody.

This afternoon I'll be off to the lock-up for an early look at budget so I thought I'd provide a heads up on what we'll be reviewing in the budget documents.

You'll recall that we have 4 major themes to our policy work these days each of which come from our foundational policy work (the BHD) and align with the current economic and environmental circumstances:

1. Leadership - this is mostly related to the re-structuring of leadership systems in sport, like Ministerial appointments/mandates, development of the Agency concept, and the aggregate nature of political and policy leadership that is exercised by the federal government. The budget is one more chance for us to assess the nature of the leadership that we know is required for sport and physical activity policy success. The Minister's readiness to engage with the sector and understanding of the value of sport in society is a good sign.

2. The 1% commitment - the budget is the primary (but not the only) tool for Parliament to meet its goal of investing the equivalent of 1% of federal health spending on sport and physical activity. This commitment, first introduced by the Conservatives and now indexed at $500M, has been adopted by each of the federal parties so we'll consider progress on that front too, not just today but also tomorrow when the Liberals plan to announce their response to the budget. This is a positive outcome of your efforts during the last election campaign - so let's keep those relationships alive with your local MP by conversing with them about the nature of today's budget.

3. Infrastructure - the leaks in advance of the budget have already sent the signal that capital investment is being enhanced and fast-tracked. There are some very promising signs here so we'll look closely at the details and provide some analysis of what and where the opportunities exist in the next 2 years. If you have a shovel ready project, you ought to prepare your leaders for some smart work in the coming 6 months. Kudos to Victor Lachance at True Sport for his work in advancing this file with our colleagues in the Arts and Environment, through Imagine Canada - weekly briefings of Finance and PMO officials by a collective of leaders being the result.

4. Tax policy - there is much underway in tax policy that is having / will have an impact across the sport sector.
Consider that a pre-budget announcement of an enhancement to the athlete trust policy is already in the books (http://www.fin.gc.ca/drleg-apl/BIAdec08N-eng.asp with kudos to JD Miller, Jen Heil and Kim St Pierre for persisting on this file with pro bono help from KPMG/OgilvyRenault.
Also consider that the Children's Fitness Tax Credit is due for an upgrade to "fully refundable" status based on an election commitment last September.
And consider still that the series of tax incentives for giving and philanthropy continue unabated with more anticipated in today's budget.
All of which is to say that we now have a tax system that is much more in tune with what Canada's highest earning athletes, low income families, and fund developing sport organizations will benefit from on the fiscal front. Clearly, we'll have more to say on this later today and tomorrow.

What else might we look for in the budget?
The resolution of the Vancouver 2010 projects, linkages to the PanAm or Universiade efforts for 2015, the health file especially in relation to Aboriginal communities, international sport for development trends, and human resource strategies that impact non-profit organizations.

In the end, our sector's challenge will be to determine and to act in a way that puts this budget into action, on short notice, so that sport and physical activity communities are a big part of Canada's economic turnaround.

More to come later tonight,
Ian