Do sheep look up?

• Author: Robinson, David
• Position: ECONOMICALLY SPEAKING - Column

It should be easy to write a quick summary of the economy of Northern Ontario. After all, I have been writing about the Northern economy for years. I am one of the so-called -experts" that the CBC calls for comments. I can draw on Wikipedia and the Statistics Canada Database, CANSIM. And I have Chris Southcott's terrific studies based on the 2006 Census.

In 2008, Southcott, a sociologist at Lakehead University, produced a dozen studies for the Local Labour Market Training and Adjustment Boards in Northern Ontario. The studies look at age structure, wages, occupation, women, Francophones, Aboriginals, industrial structure, youth migration, and so on, for 2001 and 2006. The studies are online and should be required reading for all Northerners.

The picture Southcott drew wasn't a surprise. Population was falling, the resource industries were employing fewer people, and "blue collar" jobs were disappearing. Thirty-one thousand jobs had vanished in the industrial sector between 1986 and 1996. They were almost replaced by 30,365 jobs in the service sector. Even during the boom running up to 2007 the resource sector lost jobs. Mining gained 1,175 but agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishing lost 1,385. Health and social services gained 5,435 jobs but manufacturing lost 5,685.

Southcott found that outmigration has slowed down a bit. Incomes were a bit lower than the rest of the province and were declining, and we had fewer rich and more poor people. First Nations communities were lagging on just about every social indicator.

His studies tell us the North is in trouble. Behind the grim facts are three economic realities.

The first is that every year technological progress reduces the labour needed in logging, mining and mills. - The region either finds other products to export or it declines. It has been declining. The decline has been hidden by the growth of the service sector and the expansion of the healthcare system. The shift to services is losing steam, however. It will get harder to ignore the declining need for Northerners.

The second fact about the Northern economy is that Northerners are costly.

Northerners need more roads, snow clearing, miles of sewer water plants, schools and hospitals per person than people in the crowded south. They also require more police and fire services per person. especially in the rural areas...