Provincial Minister of Health and MLA for Rosetown-Elrose Jim Reiter's golf tournament Friday at Sask Landing was met by protestors.

Members of the Saskatchewan and Government Employees' Union (SGEU) and Service Employees International Union-West (SEIU-West) took to the side of the road to picket against cuts to the Ministry of Health's budget, which means a 10-percent, $1.5-million, decrease in funding for the community-based organization sector.

"Member of SGEU and members of SEIU-West who represent a very large proportion of workers in the community-based organization sector are rallying to raise awareness about the cuts from the Ministry of Health's budget," said SIEU-West president Barbara Cape. "We wanted to raise the awareness of what those cuts look like for vulnerable communities within the province."

Cape said community-based organizations provide services that "don't receive a lot of awareness or fanfare, yet they're relied on very heavily by those people who use the services - things like addiction services, group homes, there's a wide variety of areas that really rely on financial support from the Ministry of Health and the regional health authorities."

"That $1.5-million truly is a lifeline for these community-based organizations because they operate on shoestring budgets in the worst sense of the word," Cape said. "We need to actually invest in these services instead of taking away funds."

SGEU president Bob Bymoen finds it appalling that the government assumes the average citizen wouldn't want to cover the cost of at least maintaining the previous levels of funding to community-based organizations.

"$1.5 million is a dollar-50 each," Bymoen said, averaging it out amongst the province's population of about a million. "I understand not everybody pays taxes and there are variations in that, but I look at that - whatever the share, a dollar-50 each, I'm absolutely insulted that this government thinks on my behalf that I don't want to pay that dollar-50 that they're saving in order to maintain these services for people who need them."

"We're hoping people will contact their MLAs and contact the premier, and say that's worth $1.50 to maintain these servies, and actually maybe it's worth two bucks to maybe improve on them rather than just maintain them, because there are more people in the province, and there's more need right now," Bymoen said.