Responding to the age of austerity.

• Author: Atkins, Michael
• Position: PRESIDENT'S NOTE - Column

The province of Ontario is broke.

The Canadian government, while certainly not broke, is cutting back substantially on program spending. It wants less government for financial and ideological reasons. Northern Ontario is going to get hammered. It has already begun. It is a lot easier to spend more than spend less. It hurts. Funding announcements usually get made three or four times. Try and get information when things are being closed.

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Small things make a big difference up here. Everything matters. The first rounds from the province are not encouraging. They appear devoid of consultation. The Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC) closure, divestiture, call it what you will, is not transparent and not collaborative. No one knows anything, as of this writing, except that the last passenger train has run its course. Twenty-four hours before the last ONTC train left the station, the province announced it would close 10 parks, nine of them in northeastern Ontario. Incredible. They didn't talk to anyone about it, including most of their own staff, who were blindsided by it. It seemed purposely insulting. The savings were picayune and hardly worth talking about when compared to the tens of millions flushed down the drain to move power plants around in southern Ontario for no obvious public purpose.

The only institutions in Northern Ontario that have any capacity to respond, protect, fight back, reason or otherwise propose solutions for Northerners, are the municipalities. Everyone else is dependent on the provincial or the federal government for something and they will be keeping their mouths shut. The opposition MPs and MPPs will, of course, raise hell but they have no currency with the government and are ignored.

I can only imagine Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli must be knawing his hands off his arm about the ONTC. His party's response to the ONTC included the usual exclamations of outrage but in practical terms was tepid. The Tories hold a balance of power on this issue but have not offered it up. If they wanted to save it, they could. Vic is an activist, a doer. He must rue the day he moved from mayor of North Bay where he could do much, to Opposition where he can do little. Of course, if the Tories win, he will be the next minister of northern development and mines but probably too late for the ONTC. My guess is the Tories prefer the Liberals wear this one before they have to do anything. If Vic was mayor, he...