As it stands, the North is born to fall.

• Author: Robinson, Dave
• Position: ECONOMICALLY SPEAKING - Northern Ontario

Northern Ontario doesn't have any serious economic problems. It does have political problems: Northern Ontario doesn't have a government, can't make plans, and can't make decisions. Since the North can't make decisions, it will continue as it has for the last 100 years - drawing down its stock of natural resources while the provincial government invests northern revenues in southern Ontario.

As an economist I approve - the provincial government should drain the North as fast as it can. The North has only 750,000 or so people. The south has over 11 million. The people in the south own the resources. Ontario is a democracy. The best and most democratic strategy is to maximize output with the smallest possible workforce in the North. If that sounds like the same plan that mining and forestry companies follow, it should. How else would you run a resource colony?

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Northerners may not like this strategy. They may think that Northern economic development is a good thing. They may want to create jobs for their own kids in Northern Ontario.

Too bad. The north is "born to die," as Dr. Michael Atkins put it last month in his column. But Atkins, who has been writing about Northern issues and fighting for Northern businesses for 30 years has made a proposal that could change the rules of the game. He is calling for a regional government for the North.

His arguments are supported by the best current thinking on economic development. For example, at the Canadian Political Science Association meetings in June, Tijs Crutzberg from the University of Toronto compared development strategies in Toronto and Austin Texas. Austin has a population no bigger than Northern Ontario's, but Austin has been amazingly successful in building a high-tech industrial base. How did it do it? By doing something like the Atkins option. Local community leaders and business people have developed what Crutzberg calls "strategic governance." They didn't wait for state or federal government to solve their problems. Instead, they developed their own regional strategy. Their economy is booming.

In Northern Ontario, vital decisions are made piecemeal in a hundred different provincial committees. Very few are made in the North and there is no strategic plan.

The Ministry of Northern Development and Mines is supposed to play a central role in Northern affairs, but the ministry has no capacity for economic planning, and no responsibility for forestry, education...