Is there any hope in the Northern separatist threat?

• Author: Cirtwill, Charles
• Position: Think Tank

In my February column, I talked about how shifting to proportional representation in place of our current first-past-the-post electoral system could give Northern Ontario more clout in the halls of power down there in Ottawa. As I was crafting that piece someone else was reviving another idea meant to give Northern Ontario more power over its own future right here at home: Separation! Vive le Nord de l'Ontario libre!

A fellow by the name of Trevor Halliday has launched an online petition calling for the creation of the province of Northern Ontario. As of this writing, his online petition had 3,815 supporters. A Sudbury Star story talking about the petition also included a poll on the issue; the results there stand at 2,441 in favour, 744 opposed.

Even if we were to assume that the 2,400 Sudbury Star voters and the 3,800 petition signers were not mostly the same people, the total is still well short of the 10,000 supporter threshold that the Northern Ontario Heritage Party (NOHP) achieved in October 1977, the point at which it became an official party in Ontario.

Alas for the NOHP early standard bearers of the "treat us better or we are leaving" Northern meme, it was largely downhill from there. A paid-up member ship of just 200 by 1981 and just four card-carrying members by 1985.

Although the NOHP was revived in 2010 and is still fighting for a better deal for Northern Ontario (if no longer calling for separation if we don't get it), it is still largely being ignored by voters.

This, regardless of the merits of our beef with Queen's Park or Ottawa, is the crux of the problem with debating separation. If those of us living in the North don't take this option seriously (and we don't) then no one else will either.

So, could separation be made more appealing to Northerners? Maybe, but it is a long shot.

Work done by Lakehead economist Livio Di Matteo and others has shown that the fiscal return of separation or annexation to Manitoba is likely break even at best. Why go through the time, trouble and expense of separation to be only marginally better off?

A resource boom, based on the Ring of Fire or just resurgent global markets, could potentially give the North some real incentive to make a better deal with Queen's Park or to go our own way.

Especially if the perception was that over-regulation or mismanagement was negatively impacting opportunities for prosperity here in the North.

Resource extraction played a big part in the...