Duane Hicks
The Town of Fort Frances will make another attempt to rally regional support for improved access to the Ontario Tourist Information Centre (OTIC) here.
Fort Frances CAO Mark McCaig said the town held a meeting back on Dec. 3, where it invited other municipalities to come out and get informed on the decrease in visitors to the OTIC ever since the relocation of the Canada Customs building in 2001 caused a change in traffic flow.
While the response was not as good as hoped, McCaig admitted, there appeared to be some support from the region to get the provincial government to come and take a hard look at the OTIC in regards to the “compromised access for visitors entering Canada.”
As a follow-up to that, town council passed a resolution Monday night to appeal “the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and the Ontario Tourism and Marketing Partnership Corp. to take a lead role in the investigations and identifications of all issues regarding the ease of access to the OTIC in Fort Frances for visitors entering Canada at our point of entry to help facilitate the effective delivery of OTIC services to the betterment of all municipalities in Northwestern Ontario.”
McCaig now will make a presentation to district municipal delegates this Saturday during the Rainy River District Municipal Association’s annual general meeting in Atikokan, urging them to make the same appeal.
The above resolution also will be sent to municipalities outside the RRDMA, asking them to pass similar resolutions in support of the cause.
McCaig said the situation continues to be frustrating.
“We’ve been at this for about five years, and we’ve went to the government time and time again,” he remarked, adding the time is coming when the town has to sit down and evaluate how much longer it wants to keep up the battle.
“It’s getting to the point where we’ve just about exhausted every means possible,” McCaig said. “We’ve met with [the province] no less than six times in my tenure.
“I don’t know, we’ll see what kind of response we get Saturday at the RRDMA,” he added.
“The case could easily be made that the benefits are far greater for municipalities outside of Fort Frances,” McCaig stressed. “We’re looking for a little more support from the municipalities, and we’re looking to kind of see some kind of finalization to our efforts in this whole thing.”
