{"id":1141,"date":"2006-11-29T11:58:12","date_gmt":"2006-11-29T16:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.accessniagara.com\/blog\/index.php\/2006\/11\/29\/tourism-operators-lobbying-for-gst-program\/"},"modified":"2006-11-29T11:58:12","modified_gmt":"2006-11-29T16:58:12","slug":"tourism-operators-lobbying-for-gst-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/29\/tourism-operators-lobbying-for-gst-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Tourism operators lobbying for GST program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.accessniagara.com\/c\/?517\">Niagara Falls Review<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Privatizing the GST visitor rebate program is a &#8220;good compromise&#8221; for a government eager to divest itself of the scheme and an industry desperate to save it, local tourism stakeholders said Monday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Privatization is the best compromise,&#8221; said Anna Pierce, general manager of Niagara Falls Tourism. &#8220;The government is free of it, tourism operators can still take advantage of it and a private company can run it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In September, the federal government announced plans to scrap the program, which allows visitors to claim back the GST on accommodation and other purchases with receipts of $50 or more, claiming the $78-million cost to run the program isn&#8217;t worth the expense since only three per cent of visitors use it.<\/p>\n<p>The news shocked Canada&#8217;s tourism industry, which has been hit with a series of setbacks since Sept. 11, 2001.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Niagara Falls Review: Privatizing the GST visitor rebate program is a &#8220;good compromise&#8221; for a government eager to divest itself of the scheme and an industry desperate to save it, local tourism stakeholders said Monday. &#8220;Privatization is the best compromise,&#8221; said Anna Pierce, general manager of Niagara Falls Tourism. &#8220;The government is free&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}