Wednesday, March 13, 1968

And just a short time after that, Mr. Speaker, a few months later the then Honorable gentleman was still confused and still frustrated and was still dbing noth- ing, hence the resignation of a valuable and trusted public servant and I read you his offered resignation

“Lieutenant-Covernor-in-Council, Province Building, Charlottetown, P.E.I. Gentlemen:

Pursuant to your minute, No. 85159 of October 22nd, 1959 and .for a Wide variety of reasons too numerous to go into in any detail herein, but borne out and developed this past year or more through a lessening confidence in the Minister responsible for the operation of this Board and his general lack of co-operation thereon, I herewith submit my resignation as a Member and the Chairman of the Fishermens’ Loan Board of this Province effective forthwith.

A. Walthen Gaudet.”

Mr. Speaker, it does not surprise me in the least that now, when again these men can invoke parliamentary immunity, we will see all sorts of these characters scurrying out from under rocks and wet planks to have their little say, secure under the cloak of parliamentary immunity. This reminds me of something. The women of Arabia used to wear a garment called the burnoose but I think the garment equally becomes some men. They should draw it up to their wicked little eyes en- deavouring to hide their countenances from public gaze and to hide their shame, if shame they possess. Despite the frantic fulminations from Members of the Opposi- tion, despite their desperate efforts, carried to the Supreme Court itself, to prevent their being called as witnesses, the true fact of their shocking administration of these matters has been finally laid before the public. Even though they piously rent their garments and religiously shunned any remote connection with any effort to inquire into these matters, in spite of all these things, we do know the fearful cost and consequences of this positively incredible blunder. This is not the only one. Many others took place, many of them. The tax payers of this Province will be a long time recovering from this financial disaster. Already extricated from them or from their future earnings is an incredible toll. Approximately one hundred dollars for every man, woman and child within this Island has gone into Georgetown, and the end is not in sight. Before this unholy mess is cleaned up for good, when the books are finally closed, after the last account has been cared for and a new owner takes over, it may well be the complete and final cost to this Province may reach in to the “teen” millions. Even this terrific cost might be defended if it brought in return the five or six hundred jobs so often mentioned by that garrulous gaggle of galahads dedicated to Moe but the general public of this Province will forever recall who was completely responsible for this sad chapter of our financial history, the ditifull record of the Tory Government led by the Honorable Leader of the Opposi— tion. This, Mr. Speaker, is the real tragedy of Georgetown. After an expenditure of about ten millions of dollars on total facilities, after an expenditure of three and a quarter millions of dollars on the food plant, what do we find? We find that the whole affair was handled with the wildest abandonment. What started out as a sensible concept by sensible men, one which was guaranteed to be provided by a sensible cost figure of one million dollars, all of this ballooned into the mammoth problem facing us today. It has been called the mausoleum. A monument to the genius of one man and the stupidity and complicity of others. As one journalist put it. “How to blow ten million dollars in easy steps”. Last evening, Mr. Speaker, we listened to a very impassionate address from the Member from Second Kings with regard to what he then held in his hand and almost left the inference that it was a piece of yellow journalism. There’s not a line in that article that hasn’t already been published time and time again throughout the presses of Canada and possibly down into the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. Listening to that Member from Second Kings over on this side of the House we were very closely moved to tears. We really thought that he and his colleagues had been badly maligned but I have read this through and, with your permission, Sir, I’m going to read portions of it which will prove that there’s nothing in this, absolutely nothing, that hasn’t

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