Roughly 25 years ago, the province took a real shine to golf as a tool to draw tourists to P.E.I.

With the sport booming across North America in the 1990s, the government decided to make golf development a centerpiece of its tourism and economic development strategies.

A new research report from the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) concludes the efforts were largely a flop — and quite a costly one at that.

The paper, called Short of the Green: Golf as an Economic Development tool on Prince Edward Island, states that the Crown corporation created specifically to operate provincially owned courses has lost money in 10 of the last 14 years.

This article appeared in the Guardian