North stakes its claim in Shield. (Economically Speaking).

I am writing this column for the second-degree visionaries in Northern Ontario. First-degree visionaries are people who look at an acorn and see a tree. A second-degree visionary orders fertilizer and a basket to collect acorns.

Northern Ontario is about to cross the almost invisible line between the old economy and the new economy.

By the time this issue reaches you, the Ontario Council of Graduate Studies will have approved Laurentian University's PhD program in mineral deposits and Precambrian geology. The first students will arrive this September.

It is that word "Precambrian" that tells the story. Search the Web for "Precambrian" and you will discover that Precambrian rocks form the Canadian Shield that covers more than half of Canada. It also covers part of the USA and half of Greenland. Laurentian has just claimed one of the biggest and richest mining areas in the world as its own territory. The department of earth sciences is about to become one of the leading geology programs Canada.

It will succeed because it is the only major department that sits right in the middle of a major mining community. In fact, it is planning to join with the Ontario Geological Survey to create the most advanced geological research facility in Ontario.

But how can an academic program affect the economy of Northern Ontario? It will bring more geologists, analysts and technicians, more labs, more researchers, more prospectors and more mines to Northern Ontario. Laurentian will use the program to leverage a PhD program in engineering. The growing mass of researchers will produce technologies that make local companies more productive. Other companies will come to get access to the growing research capacity.

The PhD program is a breakthrough for Northern Ontario. We are taking over knowledge production and technology development for our most important industry.

The earth sciences PhD is not the first doctoral program in Northern Ontario. Lakehead University already has PhD programs in clinical psychology and education. The real news is that this is the first PhD program that that builds on Northern Ontario's economic strengths.

Businesses are already developing along the university-mining axis. There are 300 firms in Sudbury supplying goods and services for the mining industry. Many of these produce high-tech goods or services. These companies already employ more people in Sudbury than Inco and Falconbridge together. At current growth rates they will create 12,000 primary jobs over the next 10 years in Sudbury alone. And the faster the Sudbury cluster grows, the more jobs will spin off into other communities.

Keeping the growth going depends on political decisions, however. Since the early 1990s, federal Liberals have been saying that economic growth depends on innovation in the hot zone between industry and the research universities. The bottleneck for the North is that the Federal government has not made a commitment to the high-tech cluster developing around the mining industries of Northern Ontario. The future of Northern Ontario may turn on whether federal politicians designate Sudbury as one of the county's technology clusters.

Provincial policy has created another bottleneck. The provincial government is responsible for post-secondary education. The province stands to earn billions of dollars in tax revenue if the mining supply and services industry becomes a major export industry, but where other jurisdictions like the US are spending more on post-secondary education, Ontario has cut funding in real terms.

Northern communities may be their own worst enemies when it comes to economic development. Each community competes with every other to attract jobs. Local politicians who publicly support provincial investment in other communities are not likely to last long. The mayor of Timmins will not ask the province to spend money on the mining supply and services cluster in Sudhury, for example, even if it will create jobs for young people from Timmins.

Yet it will take a common vision to expand the economy of northeastern Ontario. The North needs to develop a high-technology cluster for the mining industry around a single world-class research university with a strong focus on mining innovation. The slogan of the Three Musketeers - "One for all, and all for one" - would make a fine economic development strategy for the North.

The Precambrian Shield covers more than half of Canada. It reaches into the Northern USA on the south and Greenland in the north, and it contains much of Canada's mineral wealth - including gold, nickel, copper, zinc, and iron.

Geologists call it the largest craton in the world, and much of Canada's mineral wealth - including gold, nickel, copper, zinc, and iron - comes from the Precambrian Shield. The Columbia Encyclopaedia calls it "the nucleus of North America."

Dr. David Robinson, PhD, is an associate professor of economics at Laurentian University. He works with the Institute for Northern Research and Development. He can be reached by e-mail, [e-mail]