Is there anyone in Northern Ontario?

• Author: Robinson, Dave
• Position: ECONOMICALLY SPEAKING

Let me try to convince you that Northern Ontario is uninhabited. It is a theory that explains a lot about the way the North is run. If there are no people--and I mean people who count politically--then the resources can be bought and sold by the people who do count. They won't even need to ask whether we non-existent northerners will benefit from the policies and buyouts.

I know it sounds like wild rhetoric to claim there is no one in Northern Ontario--we do elect members of parliament don't we? There is a tiny Ministry of Northern Affairs, isn't there? Fednor is supposed to promote economic development, isn't it? We get to elect our own toothless school boards and our own municipal governments, don't we?

But look at things the other way around. Northern Ontario could hardly be more different from the rest of the province. The region has a resource-based economy that is radically different from southern Ontario. The boreal forest is a distinctive ecological region. The seven per cent of Ontario's population that lives in Northern Ontario (Including Parry Sound) includes 43 per cent of the province's aboriginal population and 27 per cent of the province's francophone population. So why is this distinct society run out of the closets of about 40 different ministries and departments?

The non-existence of Northern Ontario is the result of a brilliant move by the leaders of Upper Canada 156 years ago. As they moved toward negotiations about Confederation they realized that they would get to keep any territories that were part of Upper Canada going into the negotiations.

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So in 1850 an ex-fur trader, Mr. William Benjamin Robinson, raced off and bought the land north of the Great Lakes from the local equivalents of Scott Hand on behalf of Queen Victoria. Until the Robinson treaties were signed the North shore of the Great Lakes was occupied by allies of the Queen. The Aboriginal peoples had some claim to being a nation. But when principal men of the Ojibwa signed the treaty, the entire territory was suddenly legally empty. According to the treaty only the reserves were populated.

Adding French loggers didn't change the equation. The French were mistrusted even more that the Ojibwa. Adding workers from many non-British nations over the next half century didn't change the...