03/09/2017
I have been watching carefully and now believe that what's happening on PEI, and has been accelerating for the past decade, is fundamentally a strategic calculated plan to destroy the traditional Island Way of life that was so cherished by people like the late Premier Angus MacLean and so many others in this province.
This is not rural versus urban; it's destruction of the Island Way of Life.
Lets start with the most recent sell off of the Mill River golf course and Resort. The latest blow to the fabric of the Island. It's the next move on the heels of a concerted, on going attempt, to close rural hospital, small community schools, to destroy PEI and it's history and place in Confederation.
Mill River , for many years , has been the primary tourist destination in West Prince employing 60 people at public sector salary levels. It may cost government half a million dollars a year to maintain, but what about the economic spinoffs to communities like Alberton, O'leary, Tignish and many others. And there are the benefits to local, rural people and it is a strong draw for tourists and visitors from outside the region. It may be an old resort that needs some modernization but it's an important piece of infrastructure in West Prince and the golf course is one of the best this Island can offer.
Why would this Liberal government give this up to the unpredictable vagaries of the private sector? What will it become into the future, the next 10 or 20 years? Will it remain a spectactuar golf course, a premier travel destination for West Prince? What about the jobs, which will most likely now become minimum wage positions with fewer weeks and hours of employment?
The deal will pay Don MacDougall, a man well into his eighties, 12 million dollars for the next five years to improve, maintain and run it. Does he still have the entrepreneurial skills that will be needed and the vision? Does his daughter?
What guarantees are there that Mill River Resort and its Golf Course will survive? And just how many taxpayers dollars have gone into it over the past thirty years ,or so, as an important investment for West Prince and its people? More interestingly, how much did Rodds take away from it and not invest back in order to ensure that its other resorts benefited.
This is all another part of a planned move to centralize major services and institutions in the two main centers of this Island; Charlottetown and Summerside. We're told it's happening all over North America. People moving from rural communities to the cities. But why should we here on PEI pour fuel onto this fire to further hasten the erosion of this Island society?
Alan MacPhee of Souris is right. Centralizartion is an irrational, bureaucratic and political plan that is creating many of the problems facing Prince Edward Island now and destroying its character and the tenacity of its people.
To my mind , this is all being driven by big business, hungry developers, the many large international retail operations , chain stores, fast food outlets and greed. Abetted by a sluggish, uninspired government , complicit in the sell off of the Island Way of Life.
This is a province founded on primary industries, the land and the sea; a tough hardy people. But that's slowly, relentlessly being torn away through the offers of jobs in the two centralized areas, funded by hundreds of millions of equalization dollars and cash transfers from Ottawa, along with increases in taxes and never ending fees.
The two cities have the government offices, the large box stores, the regional offices and the swollen bureaucracy. More and more we see the square, efficient apartments buildings with units stacked one upon another, row upon row where more and more Islanders live, sleep and breath the city air. They don't see the land and the seascapes, the green fields and boats leaving port, ploughing out into the sea or the farmers working the land as they've done for generations.
Many Islanders now live virtually on top of each other in the two cities. They are from the countryside, the farms and seaports, the rural areas and the small communities and were lured away by the picture of a communial life , close to supermakets, malls, hospitals and social events, bingo halls and bowling.
There are also the people who've come back to the Island to discover their old way of life. Finding instead, another apartment, another city or suburb, much like any other.
This is not the kind of Island we should be striving for.
