P.E.I.’s controversial marketing deal with the NHL is officially ending

Many Islanders have either publicly scrutinized or praised the millions of taxpayer dollars spent on the NHL's marketing deal with the province, but one thing is now certain, that deal officially ends December 31st. It has exposed PEI as a tremendous travel destination to so many people, generated momentum, and again, it's momentum that we're going to build upon. Does that public scrutiny have anything to do with the reason why the deal is not going ahead anymore? Well, like I said, there's a number of factors that any government on any decision takes into account. And yes, there's, like I say, I'll leave it at that for right now. The deal had PEI logos displayed in NHL rinks on TV as the official travel destination and gave PEI exposure to viewers across North America over three years. The minister says it cost taxpayers about $7.75 million. dollars. They can equate 315,000 visitors. One of the leaders in PEI's tourism industry is frustrated to see the deal finished. You know, we've had a number of conversations with government, so we feel like this is a really big loss. Like a gut punch. It's a very big gut punch for us today, yeah. She's been calling for it to be renewed, to make more ground in an extremely competitive industry. To lose the momentum that we've been able to gain, and we've seen so much success in the last few years, I think is very concerning to us moving forward and really a lot of questions on, again, how do we get back on track and what does that look like now moving forward for industry? Opposition MLAs still want answers around the deal. While the deal is not being renewed, there's still a lot of many unanswered questions surrounding the government accountability when it comes to this particular deal. Perry and other opposition MLAs have long criticized how much this costs taxpayers including sending cabinet ministers and staff to NHL games and a $35,000 party in New York photo booths consultants travel costs steaks and not regular cuts filet mignon it's an incredible misuse of public funds Mr Speaker and frankly they should all be deeply embarrassed so they can eat filet mignon have their pictures taken with some of hockey idols all the while and island families struggle to simply keep their children warm and fed the government says it's soon going to post a third party review from IMI International which was the firm responsible for reviewing the entire NHL deal according to government that is going to show that it generated 95 million dollars in revenue Cody McKay CBC News Charlottetown