Can Northerners do a better job running the North?

• Author: Robinson, David
• Position: Economically Speaking

Most weeks, I think Northern Ontario should be run by the people of Northern Ontario. This week, I am in favour of a dictatorship. Maybe even a Trump. Or letting Queen's Park continue to run the North. It's true that Queen's Park doesn't seem to be able to run the southern half of province very well, but why would anyone think we Northerners could do a better job with our 87 per cent of the province and 5 per cent of the population?

I know it seems logical that Northerners could run their own affairs better than a government dominated by the suburbs of Toronto. Ontario has a government that hasn't been able to build proper transit for one of the wealthiest regions in the world. It has utterly failed to create a high speed rail system from Montreal to Windsor. The premier, Kathleen Wynne, personally decided to force the people of Toronto to continue to pay for highways so suburbanites can use Toronto's streets for free.

Southern governments have dithered about developing the Ring of Fire and failed repeatedly to come up with real tenure reforms. Queen's Park still doesn't have a development strategy for Northern Ontario and has yet to come up with a transportation plan. But to be honest, where is the evidence that we Northerners could do better?

The only issue that Northerners seem to agree on is avoiding taxes. Our first secession movement began in the 1890s, when the provincial government began taxing mines. Anti-tax rage drove secession talk again in the '70s when Bill Davis tried to add provincial sales tax to heating and electricity. Ed Diebel's anti-tax campaign grew into the Northern Heritage Party. Davis was forced to back down.

It didn't make sense to subsidize energy when Davis was premier, and it makes less sense now that we are worrying about climate change. Like it or not, adding the sales tax to heat and power is good economic policy. Removing the sales tax encourages us to use more energy and to spend less on conservation. Going against the best economic advice, Kathleen Wynne and Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault decided to buy Northern votes by taking the GST off electricity. Having Northerners in the cabinet didn't seem to improve the quality of economic analysis one bit.

Removing the GST...