Nine billion dollars are on the table.

It just got harder to be Rick Bartolucci.

When Premier Dalton McGuinty promised Toronto a new deal he was promising that Toronto would get more of the money that the province collects. The minister for northern development and mines may end up with less for Northern Ontario.

The Toronto Board of Trade released a study by the Center for Spatial Economics showing that senior governments take nine billion dollars out of Toronto every year. They spread it around the province and around the country. Toronto has become Canada's great cash cow.

Historically Canada's wealth came from the forests, minerals, agricultural regions and fisheries. Money flowed from the countryside into Montreal and Toronto, turning them from scummy little agricultural towns to great cities. Those wonderful old buildings along Sherbrooke in Montreal were paid for with northern fur and logs and minerals and wheat that had to pass through Montreal to get to market. No wonder the merchants of Montreal and Toronto fought for Confederation: how else could they get a share of the wealth that was beginning to flow out of the north and the west?

No one seems to know exactly when the flow changed direction. In fact most of the country was stunned in 2002 when the Toronto Board of Trade released a study showing that by 2000 the country was sucking nine billion dollars a year out of Toronto alone.

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McGuinty controls only the $1.4 billion the province sucks from Toronto. That is not enough to be a major threat to the North. The feds, who have been promising a new deal for cities, take out $7.6 billion. Of course, there may be much more than $9 billion at stake. Twenty-six other major cities in Canada could be suffering like Toronto.

How much of Toronto's nine billion comes to Northern Ontario? No one knows. What will happen when Dalton McGuinty and Paul Martin shut off the taps? No one knows.

The minister of northern development and mines should get ready for some tough budget negotiations this spring. He should take a leaf from the Toronto Board of Trade: hire someone to do for Northern Ontario what the Center for Spatial Economics did for Toronto.

The data for Northern Ontario is not easy to get. The economics departments in the northern universities are not set up for this kind of work. The Ministry of Northern Development and Mines has very limited capacity to do economic analysis. The North is headed into a battle without a map of the battlefield.

Speed matters because the revolution has begun. The cities have a lot of weight to throw around. Of Ontario's 12.3 million people, 7.5 million live and work in the seven major cities between Oshawa and Windsor. There is a strip 350 kilometres long and less than one hundred kilometres wide that contains three-quarters of Ontario's people. It is geographically smaller than Vancouver Island and economically bigger than any other province except Ontario, including Quebec. It may be the most exploited region in Canada right now, but it is waking up. Doing the kind of research we need might be dangerous. We could discover that Toronto really has been supporting Northern Ontario and that the North really should get less funding.

On the other hand, Toronto may be taking credit for some of Northern Ontario's production. Think about the mining companies that keep their executives and lawyers in Toronto. They pay income taxes in Toronto. The companies pay corporate taxes in Toronto. They make donations to the universities in Toronto. Some of the nine billion coming out of Toronto may be money that should never have gone to Toronto in the first place.

There is a deeper message in the Board of Trade Report. The justification for giving more money to Toronto is not need, although there are lots of needy people in Toronto. The argument Rick Bartolucci will have to counter is that investing in Toronto is more productive than investing in other parts of the province. He needs to show that investing in Northern Ontario will make the province richer. For that he needs a clear plan for economic development that builds on the strengths of the North.

It is time to figure out how to make Northern Ontario more productive.

Dr. David Robinson, is an associate professor of economics at Laurentian University. ([e-mail].)