Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do support the
motion. I feel at this point that $1.5 million is — I don’t disagree that we need to invest in our parks. I think we do, but I think that given our current financial situation, this is a strategic investment that needs to be delayed for a bit, basically delayed because I think we should be retaining staff positions as opposed to putting this money into parks.
I also wanted to point out that for ’08–09 there’s a total of $3.8 million proposed in the budget. If we delete $1.5 million, there’s still going to be $2.3 million invested in probably 15 different projects in our parks.
Lastly, I wanted to mention that there seem to be two projects at the Visitor Information Centre at the 60th parallel. There’s what’s been suggested will go into the visitors centre from the $1.5 million that the motion is referencing. There’s also a total of $710,000 for the Visitor Information Centre at the 60th parallel, a project that starts in ’08–09 with $10,000. So it’s not like there’s nothing going to be happening there. There’s certainly going to be something starting to happen there. That said, I’ll repeat that I am in support of the motion.