Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.
AN uncomfortable truth emerged from National Affairs columnist Tim Harper’s take on Ontario’s election results. In his Saturday column, Harper notes the majority Liberal election victory gives Prime Minister Stephen Harper a ready-made enemy in next year’s federal election.
Besides a set of proposals, it always helps to have a party to criticize and Harper and his cabinet have been using Ontario as a piñata for several years. The late federal finance minister, Jim Flaherty, went so far as to advise against investing in Ontario until its budget was addressed in the way he thought necessary. There was some truth to the observation but making it publicly, warning would-be investors around the world to steer clear of a Canadian province, crossed a line that had never been approached before.
If Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives had won last week’s Ontario election, Harper would have to look elsewhere for a whipping boy. But now that Kathleen Wynne is back with a majority — whipping Hudak’s backside in the process — Harper may be all the more anxious to sound off about her plans for Ontario’s future, plans which include more spending and fewer corporate tax breaks than the PM would like.
This brings us to Northwestern Ontario where the two levels of government have been dancing around the mighty Ring of Fire mining development that sits awaiting the bell Ontario has not yet rung.
Federal Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford and his Ontario counterpart, Michael Gravelle, have been cautiously talking about how their governments will jointly encourage the development. Ontario had been urging Ottawa to commit equally to funding a transportation corridor to get supplies in and ore out. But when Rickford said Ontario could apply for Building Canada funds just the same as anyone else, Wynne turned it into a campaign promise to spend $1 billion unilaterally while criticizing Ottawa for not acting as decisively.
There is some urgency to all of this. New U.S. carbon emission reduction targets will push up demand for the very minerals found in the Ring of Fire to produce the required technological innovations, along with the chromite it can supply for North American stainless steel. Once Ottawa gets on board the demand will be even higher. On this front especially, Ottawa and Ontario need to get along.