Wednesday, March 13, 1968 should be sold. Both Bathurst Marine and the trawlers have been only a liability for the past year and a half. My estimate of the expense of five million dollar Liberal campaign against Georgetown is probably much too low and, as I suggested before we will probably never know the real cost. The consequences of the Liberal campaign in Georgetown are disastrous and far-reaching and I will list only a few of them. The Assemblyman from the of Queens has already listed the most important ones but these are minor ones which also should be considered. The fish¬ ing industry in Georgetown was strangled in its infancy. Secondly, the people of the area were deprived of an income of approximately $140,000 a month, or nearly $1.5 million a year and these aren't my figures, they're taken from the reports of H. R. Doane & Co. who audited the books of both companies in regard to wages. The economic climate of this Province has been poisoned, as the Assemblyman from Sixth Queens has already said. We will not be able to attract marginal firms here in the near future when the probability of political harassment exists. And it does exist at the present time and, as the Member from Sixth Queens has already said, some of them packed up their marbles and left as soon as the Government changed. Fourthly, and worst of all, the Liberals have set the precedent of a Royal Commission's inquiry into the judgment of previous administrations. There is now nothing to prevent the Conservatives setting up a Royal Commission in a year or two to investigate the present Government and I suggest that many interesting findings could come out of such a Commission. Now, Mr. Speaker , I'm not going to say any more about George¬ town at the present time. As I pointed out earlier this situation did not have to happen. The present Government should have proceeded in a business like fashion to re-organize the in¬ dustries with additional or even new management. Everyone knows that this would require a further investment but it would not have been nearly as costly as their program of destruction which they embarked upon for possible political gain. No one seems to know what is going on in Georgetown . Is Foods going to open? For the past sixteen months we have been treated to repeated statements by the Premier that delicate negotiations are going on and they are said to be still going on. If so, it seems strange to me that no progress is being made. Heresay, prejudice and deceit usually give rise to myths which are often believed to be true and such a myth has been built up by the Liberals in the Georgetown affair. They have done a masterful job or rather I should say, Mr. Sigsworth has done a master¬ ful job. But in doing so they have created a much larger problem than the one they had to deal with in the beginning. I will now let Georgetown rest in peace and I in¬ vite the Government to get on with the solution of the problem which they created. People of the area demand that the problem be solved because their welfare is in¬ volved. The people of the whole Island demand it because it is their taxes which are being wasted in the area. This Assembly is where these problems should have been considered but the Liberals would have none of that. Last year they defeated three resolutions aimed at helping solve the problem and I have no doubt that a Committee of this House could have resolved this difficulty well before this and the people of Kings County in that event would be back to work. Well, Mr. Speaker this naturally leads to the consideration of economic development on the Island including farming, fishing and transportation because these three cannot properly be divorced because all of them are inter-related. This Government has spent a lot of money in the past year and I believe they were successful in increasing the provincial debt by something like twelve million dollars. Despite these large expenditures the economic position of our people is worse than it was a year ago. The Atlantic Provinces Economic Council review of 1967 shows that farm cash receipts were twenty percent less than in 1966 and that fish landings were off by 20.7% yet the Throne Speech states that P.E.I. 's landed tonnage increased more than 89r. I'm unable to understand this dis¬ crepancy and I suggest that probably the figures of the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council are more accurate. The value of manufactured goods fell also in Prince Edward Island by about 7%. Clearly, as the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council points out, our economy is on the decline and the outlook for 1968 is not good. The disparity between our income in the Maritimes and that in the rest of Canada is still present and is not lessening. The Atlantic Provinces Economic Council had some comments to make about this when they said, during the 1961-65 period, all prov¬ inces experienced high rates of growth in personal income per capita even after the —275—