In the frenzied runup to Tuesday's bad-news budget, the Liberal government quietly sent out hundreds of ticking time bombs and retreated to the relative safety of their homes for the weekend.

Last Friday, dubbed "Black Friday" by the thousands of B.C. charities that depend on gaming revenues for their existence, Rich Coleman, the minister responsible for disbursing the money, sent out a memo. His message, delivered under the sunny "Best Place on Earth" logo, was to the point: Dear Community Organizations, We screwed up the numbers, so you know that cheque we said was in the mail? It isn't.

The tone was brisk. Unapologetic. The gaming gravy train has ended, it suggested, and in its place we're funding, well, gravy. CommunityLINK, which supplies lunches to needy kids and was previously paid for by the education ministry, will be getting your money, in addition to projects supported by the BC Arts Council, also previously funded by the taxpayer.

Priorities have shifted, Coleman lectured, and community groups that we deem expendable — environmental, adult sports groups, alumni associations, and especially "a number of arts and culture organizations" — are out of luck.

It got worse. That money hadn't only been for future use. In most cases it had already been spent, based on formerly ironclad written guarantees that have simply been trashed by the very officials who signed them.

Oh puh-lease, I hear some of our readers thinking. We're all suffering, so why should I get upset about a bunch of fancy-pants artists when the alternative is to let kids go hungry?

Well, that's exactly what Minister Coleman wants you to think. That false comparison is calculated to distract from the heart of the issue: It's not the government's money to take away.

To understand why, we need to go back a few years.

In Canada, before there was "gaming" — a cuddly word that evokes family Scrabble nights — there was gambling.

And it was bad.

So bad, in fact, that it was illegal for the first 100 years of Confederation. The only exemption was for charities, which ran lotteries, bingo halls and casinos, and reaped the profits.

Then, in 1969, a Criminal Code change allowed governments a foot in the door — but only when a worthy cause was involved. Charities were their ticket and their moral justification, and still are: Just look at the pages on the BCLC website trumpeting the motto "When you play, good things happen."

Smelling easy money, the province, by the late 1990s, was soon kicking open that door, even while promising to set aside charities' cut in a trust and ensure direct access to the funds. The contest between a goliath government and small, varied community interests had predictable results.

In 1997, when the province, in a reverse Robin Hood maneuver, tried to rob charities of $24 million to pay for its own "charitable" health and education services, the NDP government was taken to court. The following January, when then-deputy premier Dan Miller was ordered to give the money back by the Supreme Court, opposition leader Gordon Campbell summed up the decision best: