The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.
CRISIS management is hardly the best way to govern. But it does focus leadership on the narrow necessities instead of the big picture it likes to ponder. Ontario’s descent into economic purgatory has caused its government to consider the cost and effectiveness of every program inside every ministry as its grapples with a $16-billion annual budget deficit.
Ahead of this month’s budget, there are scenarios being played out at Queen’s Park that would shock many Ontarians. There is no way around some of the revisions that are coming, so prepare to be shocked.
Queen’s Park tends to look outward from its downtown Toronto edifice at two-thirds of the jurisdiction about which some in its employ have no idea. They’re not really sure where Thunder Bay is (let alone Terrace Bay), just that it’s far away.
As Ontario’s Liberal government prepares to narrow its focus and lessen what it does with the dwindling tax base at its disposal, how far afield is it looking? There are a couple of northerners in cabinet: Thunder Bay’s Michael Gravelle at Natural Resources and Sudbury’s Rick Bartolucci at Northern Development and Mines. But cabinet is dominated by the same, Toronto-centric mindset that drives the policy writers at every ministry. How, then, will the real North fare in the revamped Ontario set to emerge?
Don Drummond, the economist on whose advice the Liberals are counting to point the way forward with his Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, urged the government to “not simply cut costs” but instead “give priority to programs and activities that invest in the future rather than serve the status quo.”
Ontario has a big future in mining. Mines are in the North. New mines — huge, rich mines — are being planned in the North despite muddled provincial policy that tells exploration companies they must consider first nations but fails to tell them how or to effectively facilitate those discussions.
Queen’s Park is very good at producing plans and studies that hear good advice from northerners on how to make the North grow, then ignore the best of it in favour of ideas that better suit what the policy-makers think is best for us. Then, when things go wrong, the mandarins make northern leaders jump through hoops to access assistance to tide them over. Ontario is so strapped for cash that even before this month’s budget it cancelled the Special Assistance Grant program that helped small northern municipalities pay the bills when their single industry left town. In its place, Municipal Affairs will provide “advice and training.”
How about instead, fashion northern policy for northern needs and opportunities?
The so-called Ring of Fire is poised to become Canada’s largest mining development. A horseshoe-shaped deposit of multiple rich minerals west of James Bay, it likely will be a major driver of Ontario’s economy well into the future. But will Ontario manage and shape the public policies that govern the Ring of Fire from Toronto? And will the public benefits that accrue from the Ring of Fire be applied effectively here in the North or be dumped into general revenue the way mining and forestry returns were in the last two centuries?
The North has its own economist and Livio Di Matteo has some advice for the province in a recent entry on his website that scoffs at yet another northern development plan now being studied:
“Ontario does not need a growth plan. Ontario needs a set of concrete actions to develop its northern resource frontier as an investment frontier for the province. The North can be a place for infrastructure investment and value-added processing that can drive economic growth in Ontario. The North can be a frontier for the deployment of Ontario’s labour skills and human capital. Given the capital- and technology-intensive nature of modern mining, the North can also be a frontier for high technology industries. And, the financial service industry in Toronto got its start in the financing of mining ventures in Northern Ontario. Financing new mining ventures in the North can once again be a source of growth for Toronto’s financial sector. What is Ontario waiting for?”