PEI Premier Ghiz let $500 million in development money slip away with no industrial development

Premier Ghiz of PEI worried about EI changes that affect 78% of Islanders (Photo CBC News)

Did Premier Ghiz see the shifting sands of Canada coming to hit him with the triple threat of reduction in Employment Insurance benefits, Federal transfer payments and massive layoffs of public servants?

If he had, perhaps some of the $500 million PNP money would have been spent on industrial development and not buying luxury homes and cars, propping up bankrupt businesses and essentially squandered on anything that had a pulse with a partisan connection. 

It took some college students in Halifax, NS to put the PNP story on the international map with coverage in the US-based Huffington Post. Cashing In: Inside PEI’s Controversial Immigrant Partner Program

The PEI version of the PNP program was so corrupt or badly managed, it caused the Federal government to shut down the program all across the country.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney

“This was a serious failure that was not just about the Island, it affected the integrity of our Canadian immigration system,” Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said in an interview with The Guardian.

“We haven’t seen anything that bad in any other part of the country, at least to my knowledge. And I hope it hasn’t caused any reputational damage for Canada or for the Island overseas for prospective immigrants.”

Investors put $500 million into PEI businesses that rarely ended up in a real business but did fund almost 2,000 numbered companies many of them traceable back to partisan supporters of government. In the pre-Ghiz days, PNP was called “cottage money” for the number of Conservative faithful who bought expensive cottages with the free foreign money.

The national media in Canada woke up to the state of PEI’s ability to live high off the Federal hog with a round of stories supporting EI reform.

“While it does not quite have the political incorrectness of racial profiling,” writes the Toronto Sun, “the report highlighting the addresses of the Pogeyvilles of this country, where the abuses of Employment Insurance are so profound, resulted in the predictable bellyaching from the left.”

“Is there not something wrong with the system, and perhaps the will of the province, when 78% of EI claimants in Prince Edward Island are regular customers, especially when the national average is only 36%?

An investigation by journalism students at the University of King’s College has found that a decade after it started, P.E.I.'s now-defunct immigrant partner program has an uncertain legacy. For some foreign nationals, it became a way to purchase entry into Canada, by making “investments” they would never recoup, in companies they might not even know. (Photos: Shutterstock/ University of King's College)

P.E.I. Premier Robert Ghiz blames this horrendous percentage on his province’s seasonal industries of fishing, farming and tourism. But what’s his government doing to attract new industries to P.E.I.? Obviously not much.”

Well, not much we can’t confirm, but no enough is the obvious answer. Now into his second mandate, Premier Ghiz has little grasp of the new economics of the world where the tap of patronage and largesse has been turned off.

The old solution for PEI governments since the 1970s – go to Ottawa and beg for money – is over. Canada woke up and decided PEI is a place that doesn’t try hard enough.

Last week one political pundit opined that fisherman would not be affected by the changes that make it harder for repeat EI claimants to maintain the status quo. “Fisherman are sacred. Lawrence MacAulay will see to that.”

“Cardigan MP and Liberal fisheries critic Lawrence MacAulay is also slamming the EI changes, saying they will jeopardize seasonal industries and represent an attack on the Atlantic region by the Harper government,” says CBC.

“It is strictly a reform agenda and I was scared of this, praying to God it wouldn’t happen, but it has. This is going to be very, very damaging to our economy on Prince Edward Island,” said MacAulay.”

MP MacAulay is a formidable politician but it appears fishermen are one of the targets of the Harper government.

Mike McGeoghegan, President of the PEI Fisherman’s Association and father of Liberal MLA Charles McGeoghegan, wants the world to accept price controls for PEI fisherman.

“All they have to do is pay us for our fish, and then we don’t qualify. But because they’ve kept us on the low-end of this for years and years and years, and they haven’t paid us what the fish is worth, that’s why we qualify for unemployment,” said McGeoghegan.

“McGeoghegan worries fishermen will be thrown into the workplace to compete for jobs with much younger applicants. And he said they need the winter to prepare for the coming fishing season.” CBC

Premier Ghiz is just another in the long line of PEI premiers who believed the money from Ottawa would never stop. Conservative Premier Pat Binns had an industrial development strategy for PEI. The current government has one but it has been ineffective. Squandering half a billion on political patronage was not part of the plan but it should have been.

Meanwhile life on PEI is among the lowest standard in Canada says The Centre for the Study of Living Standards. “P.E.I. has the second-worst ranking when it comes to quality of life in Canada, according to an Ottawa research organization,” reported CBC

“It only has 70 per cent of the national average, and it ranked the last in Canada of all the provinces and territories, so that’s what pulled it down. Prince Edward Island did better in the other indexes, for example on life expectancy where it was sixth.”

Patronage does not pay for the population.