Ian Munro, an independent economic and public policy analyst and AIMS author, discusses the results of his most recent study looking into PEI's golf tourism strategy: "After the turn of the millennium, the golf boom crashed, tourism traffic dropped and the provincially owned courses began to bleed red ink."
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.
At one point in the early to mid-1990s on P.E.I., building a golf course was considered a licence to print money. A popular story that regularly made the rounds in those heady days was that a farmer went to the bank looking for a loan to expand his agricultural operation and was turned down. The farmer then asked about possible financing to build a golf course instead and the bank asked, “How much do you want?” The golf boom was in full bloom and nothing could stop it. A report released Tuesday by the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies provides a harsh assessment of our provincial government’s involvement over the years in P.E.I.’s golf industry, suggesting it was a poor investment which ended up costing the province millions. The study doesn’t mention the revenue generated by golf nor what our tourism industry would be without our courses. The study is both narrow in scope and often too critical.
Halifax, NS (10 February 2015): A new research report from the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) shows that Prince Edward Island’s (PEI) golf development efforts, which were intended to boost tourism to the Island, were largely unsuccessful. The paper documents a number of reasons for the policy failure and offers lessons from the experience for governments on [...]
Ian Munro, an independent public policy analyst born on Prince Edward Island (PEI), argues in this paper that PEI's efforts to bolster tourism on the Island using the golf industry have largely failed. He insists that the government made “tactical errors” and that it “relied on simplistic projections, while failing to consider risks and alternative scenarios.”
Halifax, NS (13 January 2015): A new AIMS research report, “Education on Wheels,” shows that student transportation costs are rising steadily across Maritime Canada, even as student enrolment declines, and that provincial governments in the region are missing opportunities to achieve cost and energy efficiencies. The authors, Paul W. Bennett and Derek M. Gillis, demonstrate [...]
Paul Bennett of Schoolhouse Consulting and Derek Gillis, an independent research consultant, argue that public transportation costs are too high in the Atlantic region and outline the many ways in which provincial governments can reduce them.
Telegraph Journal commentator Charles Moore discusses the AIMS publication "The Size and Cost of Atlantic Canada's Public Sector" and argues that it is time for reform.
AIMS Director of Research and Programmes Ben Eisen discusses the Nova Scotia Tax and Regulatory Review authored by Laurel Broten with CCPA Nova Scotia Director Christine Saulnier on CBC Information Morning!
AIMS Director of Research Ben Eisen, policy analyst Shaun Fantauzzo, and UNB economist David Murrell discuss PEI's fiscal challenges in the context of declining equalization payments in their latest opinion pieces featured in the Guardian and Telegraph Journal.