Perhaps some light at the end of the tunnel.You'll see on the page opposite, a new series from Northern Ontario Business Northern Ontario Business is a Canadian magazine, which publishes monthly in Greater Sudbury, Ontario. The magazine covers business news and issues in Northern Ontario. called "Rethinking Northern Ontario Northern Ontario is the part of the province of Ontario which lies north of Lake Huron (including Georgian Bay), the French River and Lake Nipissing. Northern Ontario has a land area of 802,000 km² (310,000 mi²) and constitutes 87% of the land area of Ontario, although it ". The compilation of ideas and perspectives frankly are not that new. My partners in this adventure (Livio Di Matteo and David Robinson David Robinson or Dave Robinson is a name shared by the following individuals:
"Rethinking" is meant to bring together some of our ideas in a more coherent manner. It's also meant to be a catalyst for an important debate about how we administer and manage this wonderful part of the world. We can do a lot better. To begin to make change we have to acknowledge the elephant in the room Not to be confused with White elephant. The elephant in the room (also elephant in the living room, elephant in the corner, elephant on the dinner table, elephant in the kitchen, horse in the corner, 400lb gorilla in the room, etc. . Our greatest weakness is that most of us are compromised when it comes to speaking our mind. In a small economy dominated by big actors like resource companies, and big government, it is a brave man or woman indeed who speaks from the heart without regard for economic consequences. We live in a small world. Many of our leading locally-owned companies do a lot of business with our major resource companies. All of our mayors need to think long and hard about biting the hand that feeds them, which is to say the provincial government. It can be subtle or it can be brutal. It is the difference between doing business in a diversified economy, where power is dispersed, or a smaller one where power is concentrated. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The recent sale of Inco and Falconbridge is a case in point. There was no serious debate about the implications of such a massive change in our economic life. Business was silent, provincial politicians had nothing to say, federal politicians of all stripes were no where to be seen except in private meetings where the discussions were to be charitably sycophantic syc·o·phant n. A servile self-seeker who attempts to win favor by flattering influential people. [Latin s , and only after some considerable prodding did our former Mayor David Courtemanche David Courtemanche (born 1964) is the former mayor of Greater Sudbury, Ontario, serving one term from 2003 to 2006. Courtemanche won election in the 2003 municipal election after the retirement of longtime mayor Jim Gordon. put a working paper together that addressed some of the issues. Nothing of consequence has resulted from that report. We have no influence. It is the province that establishes the rules of the road for resource companies and it is the federal government that can impact when there is a massive change in ownership of a Canadian company. The discussions that need to take place are tough. There is nothing easy about going to a mining company and saying you aren't paying enough tax. There is nothing painless about going to a forestry company and saying you haven't done enough about diversifying into the value added Value Added The enhancement a company gives its product or service before offering the product to customers. Notes: This can either increase the products price or value. business and we are going take back some forest to make sure it happens. There is some hope. The McGuinty government has done a couple of things to indicate it realizes change must happen. The first is that it gave Toronto more authority to deal with its unique problems as Canada's largest City-State. Secondly, it has launched a planning process (see Rethinking) that acknowledges implicitly that economic planning economic planning, control and direction of economic activity by a central public authority. In its modern usage, economic planning tends to be pitted against the laissez-faire philosophy which developed in the 18th cent. in a province this large needs to be seen through a regional prism. The Liberals deserve credit for these decisions. The first hiccup hiccup or hiccough, involuntary spasmodic contraction of the diaphragm followed by a sharp intake of air, which is abruptly stopped by a sudden, involuntary closing of the glottis (opening between the vocal cords); the consequent blocking of air is that Toronto has completely blown its first attempt to increase revenue. Mayor David Miller put together a gutsy plan to put a small land transfer tax on housing and a vehicle registration tax. It was to raise $400 million dollars or so. Very quickly the vested interests in those sectors screamed and the council caved in. Miller lost his tax by one vote (well they deferred it to November) and there is a huge cat fight. But this is not a failure. This is just the first act of a municipality having to grow up. It is healthy and David Miller should have known he needed to show innovation in saving money as much as collecting it. He will learn. We have to grow up in Northern Ontario as well. Our job at NOB Nob, in the Bible, religious center just N of Jerusalem. Saul had its inhabitants massacred. is to raise all the issues you don't want to talk about and give some of these ideas the light of day. Your job is to have an opinion. Go to www.RethinkingNorthernOntario.org and tell us what you think. Michael Atkins President Laurentian Media Group Laurentian Media Group is a Canadian newspaper and magazine publishing company. Laurentian currently has several publications in the Greater Sudbury, Ontario area, including the biweekly community newspaper Northern Life, the magazine matkins@itworldcanada.com |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion