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Petition
Presented May 28, 2009
Long Island Causeway
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MR. SPEAKER: The
hon. the Member for the District of Port de Grave.
MR. BUTLER:
Well, Mr. Speaker, it is a
pleasure to be able to stand today with a petition, and
I am going to present all the copies that I have now of
the petition with regards to the Long Island causeway. I
did not present any over the last three or four days
because I was hoping other people I know who have some
of those petitions might have presented them, but I will
pass all the ones that I have in now. It seems like it
is coming to the time of year when this may be my last
opportunity for this session.
Mr. Speaker, it is a very
important petition. It is signed by not only the people
of Long Island, all the surrounding areas, the
communities, whether it is Bishop’s Falls, Grand
Falls, all of those individuals know the needs and the
concerns that the people have with regards to this
issue. They had an excellent ferry service, in their
minds, for some twenty-six years but they believe that
particular service has been stripped away from them and
now they have a joint service being shared with Long
Island and Little Bay Islands.
In the prayer of their
petition they mentioned that they would like to have a
ferry service to replace what they have in existence at
the present time, but their main concern is for a fixed
link to the Island. As I mentioned before, there are
many issues why they present this petition. It is
because of medical reasons, transportation of their
students. The last day I mentioned also with regards to
the timeframe that it is for them to get an ambulance
service - with the ferry service they had originally as
versus the shared service. It increases from a
half-an-hour of wait time up to approximately three or
four hours.
The other issue they
present is with regards to, there are approximately some
100 individuals who rely on a living from the sea and
their product has to be transported, and with this
shared service many times their product does not get off
the Island and they have concerns with the quality of
the product and so on.
Mr. Speaker, on behalf of
the people, not only on Long Island, I present this
petition with all their families and friends in the
various areas, and hopefully, government will go back to
the commitment they made in 2003 that there would be a
causeway built to Long Island. We ask that government
will reconsider this and listen to the wishes of the
people.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker. |
