An open letter to Bob Rae.

Dear Bob, I am not mad at you, even though you froze my salary when you were premier. And we are both sorry that the guy who followed you took the credit and gave the savings to his friends. I was happy to hear that you've agreed to head the Post-Secondary Education Review.

Recommendations from a panel with two ex-premiers will be taken seriously, especially when one of them, Bill Davis, was the architect of the education system that has served us so well for the last 35 years. Your report will be the blueprint for the next 35.

Here are some ideas about what the North needs.

You were asked to come up with a student assistance program that promotes increased access to post-secondary education. Access is a major problem in the North. Statistics Canada reported recently that high school students who live beyond commuting distance from a university were far less likely to go to university. It was worse for low-income students. Twenty-seven per cent of high-income students near universities actually go to university, but only three per cent of low-income students outside of commuting distance attend. Many of the students who don't make it are northern, Aboriginal or both.

Cost is the major barrier. University education costs a lot more if you can't live at home. Obviously, you want to recommend subsidized residences for out-of town Northern students. You should be recommending transportation assistance. You should probably recommend funds for the universities to get out to the schools to recruit.

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More importantly, you should recommend jobs for students. The way to get more poor kids to university is to promise them jobs while they study. Give them work that helps them develop intellectually and, at the same time, increases the productivity of schools and universities. Pay them to serve as research assistants, lab assistants, teaching assistants and tutors for the elementary schools.

A work-for-school program would have a big payoff. It would keep good students in the North and help attach them to their communities. It would improve the labour supply, reduce poverty, and raise the educational level in small communities. It would even be good for the kids who don't go to university--there would be less competition for scarce jobs at Dairy Queen or the hardware store.

You have been asked to "link funding to the objectives of better workers for better jobs in an innovative economy." Increasing funding for students at the graduate level is the most effective approach in the North. The northern economy can only develop if we become knowledge exporters. That means we need more knowledge producers. Knowledge producers are created through thesis projects, post-doctoral positions and research grants.

To fund graduate students in the resource sectors, we need an innovation levy. For mining, it should be one cent for every dollar worth of metal extracted. The mining levy should be spent in Northern Ontario on research the mining industry wants. Most of it would go to students and they would become the specialists that the mining industry needs.

The premier and the minister of training, colleges and universities told you they want a system that is more differentiated. Some of my colleagues think "differentiated" is a code word for keeping research in big old universities like Queen's and Toronto. Northern universities would be limited to teaching undergraduates forever.

But keeping the advanced research and training for Northern industries in the south is like cutting the head off the northern economy. If we want Northern development, then the research and training for forestry and mining must be in Northern Ontario.

Fortunately, the research horse is already out of the southern barn. Northern universities are doing leading research in areas related to the local economy. Laurentian, for example, has seven research chairs related to mining and is committed to becoming Canada's leader in mining-related research, education and technology. Lakehead is similarly placed with respect to forestry.

You are going to have to tell Mary Anne Chambers, the minister of training, colleges and universities, that differentiation means that Queens and Toronto give up their troubled mining engineering programs. Tell her that advanced programs in geology, forestry and boreal ecology should all be moved to the Northern universities as quickly as possible.

I am looking forward to your report.

Dr. David Robinson, PhD, is an associate professor of economics at Laurentian University. He can be reached by e-mail to [e-mail].