[Advisors] news from N.S. & Ontario

[Marita Moll]

Hi folks.  I heard from Eric Stackhouse in Nova Scotia.  Their 
organization is writing to Peter Mackay and Eric will try to meet 
with Mackay over the holidays.  But Mackay has noted before that IC 
doesn't see the fit with CAP anymore -- same argument we got in our 
meeting with IC.  It's going to be tough going to keep the program 
alive another year.  On the positive side, N.S. has good support from 
their provincial partner (Economic and Rural Development and Tourism) 
and strong political support at the MLA level.

I also heard from Nora Fountain who had a quick chat with Tony 
Clement.  She was met with the suggestion that CAP had nothing to do 
with the federal government now -- that it was all handled by 
libraries. Although she pointed out to him that even his closest site 
was not a library site,  it was not a situation in which she could 
keep pressing the point.  But she did tell him that we 
(Telecommunities Canada) would be in touch to talk about the need for 
a nation-wide champion. She said he was open to hearing more.  So, 
since Norah has opened that door, I guess we should walk through it.

On the library issue, we need to go to any meeting with any minister 
and make it clear in any letters any of us write, that the "libraries 
are taking care of it" line is really misleading.  We will have to 
recover the statistics we put together during the last crisis and 
share them around again.  One I remember clearly was that this line 
of reasoning would wipe out all sites in PEI.

Marita