Are We Getting Crazier Here on PEI...

Our farmers can hardly afford to put a potato in the ground let alone get enough of a price to dig it out and this "business group?" want the Province to sink a bunch of money into an interpretation museum to look at a replica...think about it for a moment...what possible business sense would this make. Any spare money the Province has should be invested in trying to develop more sustainable farming and fishing initiatives for our primary industries and hopefully this business group will help focus on ideas related to this. "Clearly" Mr. Scott needs to take some of his retirement time and look around at the dire shape some of our Island farm families are having and understand that socially and economically we need to make this the "centerpiece" of our Government's focus.
Groups wondering why whale must go
Last Updated: Wednesday, May 21, 2008
CBC News
A business group and the P.E.I museum foundation say the provincial government made a mistake when it allowed a beached blue whale to be dug up for display in British Columbia.
'I look at it as two different things. Do I look at whale bones or do I look at jobs for citizens of P.E.I.?'— Environment Minister George Webster
The whale washed up on the shore near Tignish in November 1987. It was buried, and a team from the University of British Columbia is now recovering it for display in a new museum in Vancouver.
"I'm just disappointed that such a valuable asset is leaving Prince Edward Island without any compensation to the province," Anne Arsenault, general manager of Tignish Initiatives, a local business development group, told CBC News Tuesday.Anne Arsenault is surprised the province is letting a valuable asset go for nothing. (CBC)
Arsenault said she has a letter from the province, sent five years ago, which shows that the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto was interested in the bones and in return for them was willing to provide the province with a replica, at an estimated value of $250,000. But the ROM struggled to raise enough money, and UBC has since taken over the project.
Arsenault wants to know why the province didn't negotiate a similar deal again.
"It would have been really nice to at least have the full scale replica and the interpretation to go with it, so at least the story would have stayed here and we'd still have that claim to fame," she said.
Environment Minister George Webster said he didn't know about the ROM's offer, but whether a replica is provided or not isn't the issue. The problem is the cost of a facility large enough to house it, which Webster said would be about $6 million.
"I look at it as two different things. Do I look at whale bones or do I look at jobs for citizens of P.E.I.?" said Webster, noting he would rather see the money go toward job creation on the Island.
Officials at the P.E.I. Museums and Heritage Foundation are calling the packing off of the blue whale skeleton to British Columbia a significant loss to the Island's natural heritage. They hope future governments will ensure that it won't happen again.
"Clearly we should have something like this as the centrepiece of our telling the story of Prince Edward Island," said Ian Scott, retired executive director of the museum foundation.
"A natural-history mandate has clearly been given to the museum and heritage foundation, 25 years ago."
The team from UBC says their priority is to ensure the bones are preserved for all Canadians, regardless of where they're exhibited.