Deal North into immigration process.

With virtually every piece of market research we have conducted within our company, from our sports pubs, to our information technology magazines and business periodicals, you tell us forcefully to write shorter articles. You are busy. You want useful snippets, not novels. You don't have much time and you want to maximize it. You have media in your face every day from television to the Internet to billboards in washrooms. "Keep me interested or I will abandon you," our readers say.

In keeping with your advice, I wrote you a novel last issue. Actually, it was worse than that. It was a two page 5,000-word open letter to the mayors of Northern Ontario about turning their municipal priorities on their heads. Something clearly meant to test your loyalty.

Anyway, against all odds or at least all surveys, there seemed to be a lot of interest. The article highlighted a number of ideas (you can find it on the Internet at www.northernontariobusiness.com if you missed it), but two things caught my eye since that piece that confirmed my suspicions.

In the last issue I was talking about Northern Ontario cities missing the boat on immigration policies. A few days later a Bhutanese immigrant, Brim Subba, wrote a letter to the Globe and Mail entitled "Why I left Toronto to find Canada." He said some things that old white guys like me would say at their peril for fear of being misunderstood, but he was spot on the money.

Here is part of what he said.

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"After 10 months in Toronto, my family--my wife and I and our two daughters--moved to Peterborough, Ont. It may not have been world-class museums, galleries, entertainment venues and restaurants, but it has what we're looking for as recent immigrants--the established Canada and established Canadians."

He goes on to say, "When we arrived in Toronto, what struck us most was the absence of a model culture that we might adopt in order to fit in."

What he found was a city full of people straddling two cultures.

He didn't know if he had arrived in Portugal or Italy from his vantage point around Dufferin and Dupont.

He found it unsettling. He wanted to go to where he thought Canada started.

The point is this: we live in a part of Canada that many immigrants visualize in their mind's eye. You know, the beautiful open spaces, the French-English history, the former colony made good. What they find is this fantastic experiment in multicultural diversity, which is fabulous and, in fact, fantastically unique and well Canadian in its soul, but not everybody's cup of tea.

These people don't get past our major cities. The problem is we are nowhere to be found in the immigration process. If the major cities in Northern Ontario set up an immigration department in Toronto, learning about immigrants' needs and desires and promoting moving to Northern Ontario we would be successful. Canada will only grow with a robust immigration policy. Ditto, Northern Ontario. If we don't deal ourselves in, we will have dealt ourselves out. No one else is going to do it for us.

Speaking of no one else doing it for us, the City of Toronto has done us a big favour. They have been honest, if a little loutish. Their threat to leave the AMO (Association of Municipalities of Ontario) is dramatic. Their view is that Toronto is a very different kettle of fish than the rest of us and they want AMO to have nothing to do with defining their reality. I agree with them. They are larger than most provinces. They should negotiate their own deal with the province. They are different. I wouldn't let AMO speak for me either if I was the biggest kid on the block. I'm glad Toronto has done what they have. It should be lesson for us. Will we have the courage to tell the province we are not interested in anyone else telling us what is good for Northern Ontario? We have shared values, experiences and opportunities. Do we have a shared will?

The mayors of Northern Ontario want to meet with representatives of the Golden Horseshoe and help them with their projected growth problems by directing growth to the North. It won't work. If you want wealth you have to steal it. You have to go pick it off one opportunity at a time. There is no point talking to Toronto about directing growth North. No one will listen. Just do it.

I promise to find something else to talk about next month.

Michael Atkins is the president of Northern Ontario Business. He can be reached by e-mail to [e-mail]