The New Brunswick government's decision to cancel a decades-old funding program for harness racing is spurring anger within the province's horseman circuit.
The $100,000 Atlantic sires stakes program was cut from the provincial budget. The cut comes at a time when Premier David Alward's Progressive Conservatives face massive debts and deficits.
Harness racing is not the only target. The Tory government has been cutting costs in a variety of ways, including the laying off of provincial employees, the cutting of departmental budgets and the cancelation of school construction projects
Without funding, harness racing events are now being cancelled.
A race scheduled for Victoria Day Monday in Fredericton was canceled.
Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia still contribute to the same harness racing program. As such, New Brunswick horsemen say they've been reduced to poor cousins.
The funding cut also ends more than four decades of Maritime regional co-operation within the circuit.
"It's a huge program that costs very little money, which got shared by the three provinces," said Hugh Baird, a horse owner and breeder. "And this is the government that is supposed to be going with sharing. But instead, something that was working, that they were sharing, they jump right out of."
Baird said previous Tory governments have cancelled funding for the program and later reversed the decision. He's hoping history will repeat itself with program funding being re-instated.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Mike Cameron
