Want good public policy? Be prepared to be a guinea pig.

AuthorCirtwill, Charles
PositionThink Tank

We know the lament. Northern Ontario is huge in size, small in population. Our urban centres are barely the size of large towns in other regions. A four-hour drive to get to a four-hour drive is the norm. Your cell phone might work right now, or it might not. Our economy is overly dependent on government. Private industry is largely focused in resource-dependent sectors. Some of which are under significant competitive pressures as tastes and sensitivities change globally. We are relatively old, sickly, poor and unattractive to newcomers. You get the idea.

Now, much of this is not, precisely, true. No generalization or stereotype ever is. But enough of it is based in reality that it creates a remarkable opportunity for our region to be a public policy leader. That's right, a leader. You see, our problems are not unique. Poverty, racism, low participation, scarce private investment, environmental abuse all exist elsewhere. What most everyone lacks in many cases are solutions. At least evidence-based solutions.

This is where we come in. It is also where our small size and relative isolation work to our advantage. Now, follow me along on this.

According to Forbes, Finland has recently been "pioneering a form of deciding upon public policy where people actually think through the problems at issue, think about them, consider solutions, test a few of them, then implement the best."

Test a few of them.

According to one of the lead researchers involved in the new Finnish approach, these five words are the key. The researcher notes that governments are innovating all over the place, citing examples like the Nudge Unit in the U.K. and MindLab in Denmark. But the Finns, apparently, wanted large-scale experiments at the policy level. They wanted to not just think about a problem and design a response, they wanted to test it and use the results to refine or reject it.

Experiments on a national scale are expensive and, once launched, are extremely difficult to stop, even when their impacts are negative and well known. But what if a microcosm of your society already exists? In relative isolation from external influences, but at a scale from which valid statistical data could be secured? Welcome to Northern Ontario.

Of course, we will be told, our governments at all levels are already doing this experimentation--the forthcoming pilot of an Ontario Basic Income being a prime example in Ontario, and...

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