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Judy Foote, MHA for the District of Grand Bank and Opposition Critic for
Innovation, Trade and Rural Development, says the Rural Secretariat set up
by the premier to address rural issues may as well be termed the Relocation
Secretariat because it has been abysmally ineffective, as hundreds of
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians continue to leave the province in search of
employment. "It has been suggested that the secretariat was the brain
child of the premier and if this is the extent of his creativity for rural
regions of our province, we are indeed heading down a path of devastation,"
says Foote. "This entity was created two years ago to advance rural issues
and sadly, we have been in a decline ever since.
"While there has been a large budget for the secretariat, there has been
a shortage of ideas or actions generated by this entity. Last year, the
Rural Secretariat spent over $1.6 million and is estimated to spend more
than $1.8 million this year. All the information we can obtain is that it
held two expensive retreats with no initiatives to show for the money.
"By its own admission it states that it is working on a long term 15_year
vision. Even this begs the question of how long it will take to even put
together this plan _ three to five years perhaps; and thus we are into a 20
year process, while rural communities are dying under this government’s
watch. By then, any strategy or plan will be dated and impractical.
"Not only does the secretariat appear to be a complete and shameful waste
of taxpayers money, more offensively is that it has been used by the premier
to raise the hopes of the people in rural Newfoundland and Labrador leaving
them to believe he had a plan to help revitalize the rural areas. The people
of hard hit communities like Fortune, Harbour Breton and Stephenville know
only too-well the sting of false hope and the premier has to be held
accountable for his complete failure to live up to his election promises.
"Government also continues to stonewall when questioned about the
effectiveness of the secretariat. They obviously have no answers because the
unfortunate reality is that there is no evidence the secretariat has done
anything concrete to help the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, as our
communities try to weather their economic crises without effective
government support."
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