[LINK] "Veterans move would devastate P.E.I.: mayor "

[rfmcdonald]

Closing down the Department of Veterans Affairs offices in Charlottetown certainly would. If the numbers given by the mayor are correct, something like 2% of PEI's population would be lacking in jobs--on Prince Edward Island, at least. This speaks to the extreme vulnerability of the Island economy, sadly.

Packing the federal Department of Veterans Affairs back to Ottawa with its 1,200 high-paying jobs would devastate the P.E.I. economy, says Charlottetown's mayor.

Clifford Lee was responding to the suggestion of a veteran at a news conference in Ottawa frustrated by DVA's bureaucracy. Ron Cundell, a former sergeant and veteran of the 1991 Gulf War, said the department would be better supervised in Ottawa.

"Why are they in P.E.I.?" he asked.

"They should be here in Ottawa. They should be here under the eye of the reporters, under closer eye of the ombudsman."

The headquarters for the Department of Veterans Affairs was moved to Charlottetown 30 years ago as part of a plan to distribute the economic benefits of the federal government across the country.

Cundell's suggestion that those economic benefits should be moved back to Ottawa had Island politicians scrambling to defend Charlottetown's largest employer.

"Anyone who lives here or does business here is fully aware of the significance of the department," said Charlottetown MP Shawn Murphy.

"They contribute not only financially but in a lot of other ways to the community."