Tories hit a home run!(Brief Article)

In this media centric age we tend to think history is made when we are told it is made. For example, the Alliance Party Deconstructs or Stock Market Crashes. Sometimes momentous life-changing events just sneak up on you and nobody notices until the historians tell you why history was made twenty or thirty or a hundred years ago. At the time, it may not have seemed to be a big deal.

Sometimes historic events are deliberate acts of purpose. Pierre Trudeau decided to bring the Canadian constitution home in 1982 and with it came a Bill of Rights that has changed the country notwithstanding the provincial notwithstanding clause. He made history.

In Northern Ontario Mike Harris has just made history.

No one much noticed, at least not anyone I know south of the French River, but that is to be expected.

Even a lot of folks north of the French River don't seem to get how important this history-in the-making is going to be for Northern Ontario.

The HISTORY to which I refer to is the establishment of the Northern Ontario Rural Medical School.

In more than 25 years of reading, and yes misreading, tea leaves in Northern Ontario, nothing has surprised me more or pleased me as much as this development.

Don't get me wrong. All of our premiers in the last quarter century have made an effort to help Northern Ontario deal with our unique economic challenges.

Bill Davis brought the Ministry of Northern Affairs to life when it looked like there might be a constituency for Northern separation; David Peterson transferred thousands of government jobs to Northern Ontario including the transfer of the aforementioned ministry to Sudbury and the Lottery Corporation to Sault Ste. Marie; Bob Rae salvaged Algoma Steel the first time around and helped facilitate the survival of the Spruce Falls Pulp and Paper plant in Kapuskasing.

Nothing compares to the medical school.

Why? Because this political decision has true substance. It is not a last minute pre-election funding announcement of a snowmobile trail somewhere, or the expansion of a highway scheduled to be completed within the next 10 years.

It is a structural change; a sustainable change. This decision is a commitment to build a desperately-needed core competency in Northern Ontario, namely through the training and education of doctors. The by product of course is the retention of the doctors we train.

This is a huge investment in the knowledge economy. It is revolutionary.

The decision flies in the face of the...