The author of a new report on the economic impact of golf as a tourism driver on Prince Edward Island said there is an important take-home message for all provinces in the work.
“I think the key takeaways are that it’s often a mistake when government decides to invest itself in the role of an (entrepreneur),” said Ian Munro, an independent economic and public policy consultant originally from P.E.I.but now based in Halifax.
Munro said instead a provincial government should focus on things like ensuring good infrastructure, general marketing and an efficient regulatory process to help courses develop.
“The role of being the owner and operator of the course,which really should be a for-profit venture in competition with other operators who own the course down the road,I think that was an error,” he said. A new research report from the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies said that P.E.I’s 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 the Island and elsewhere.
*This article appeared in the Times and Transcript