Smarter approach to growth: here's hoping Smart Growth panel will be smart.

The business of defying gravity is hard work. Willing economic activity into any area because you love the community is laudable, energizing, worthwhile, important and exhilarating. It can also be extraordinarily and unbelievably frustrating.

The amount of money this country has spent trying to bring opportunity to uneconomic regions is staggering.

Much of it is middle class welfare, which means corporations getting money to do things they would have done anyway. And of course there is a goodly amount of well paid employment in the business of full-time staff and consultants paid to think up, analyze, dissect, prepare reports on, react to and package various economic initiatives, most of which no doubt at some point had merit. Of course there are the politics of economic development, which we will leave aside for the moment.

The last 10 years has been brutal in Northern Ontario. The population has shrunk by tens of thousands, much of it at the hands of our own provincial government, which has slashed the public service across the board.

With the exception of one brilliant and important policy initiative from the provincial government (the northern medical school) and some investment in Internet infrastructure, the province has been unprepared to give Northern Ontario the time of day, much less a hearing on its plight. Although to be fair that puts Northern Ontario on equal footing with the board of education in Toronto, which has been decimated with cuts in recent years.

Like a dog that has been whipped too many times what are we to make of Chris Hodgson's Smart Community initiative.

To begin with, Chris is a smart cookie. He wants to be premier, and he is smart enough to know that being municipal affairs minister gets him into every nook and cranny of the province to meet and greet Tories after the day's work is done. He also knows he has to be proactive to stay out of the muck of yesterdays problems, like provincial downloading and communities that do not have enough money to do what the province asks them to do. A good way to do that is to come out with a new brand like Smart Communities and harness our generally boundless willingness to brainstorm and meet about the future.

By grabbing the geographic advocacy moniker for everything but the golden horseshoe, Chris has probably put the last peg in the coffin of the Ministry of Northern Affairs, which has all but disappeared.

Notwithstanding the sense of deja vu all over again one gets with this announcement, (these things come with all new governments and we have had a few in the last 15 years) and the hopeless duplication of effort (we already have a heritage fund, a northeastern and northwestern chamber of commerce whose job it is to advocate economic development, a fully funded Ministry of Northern Affairs that is supposed to be driving economic development, not to mention the federal government and their local economic development initiatives) I think it is probably a good thing.

a) At least someone from the provincial government has noticed we are dying out here, which is an improvement over the last few years.

b) I like Chris Hodgson. He likes action. He likes to get things done. He will listen to new ideas. He showed promise as a Minister of Northern Affairs and I think he has an affinity for the North. Additionally, he actually has some influence and is not so stupid as to invent something that will flop. He has already made that calculation. In other words our self-interest is aligned, with his.

The next issue is for his chosen ones to find a way to rise above the litany of tired bromides we gravitate to up here. The test will be to see if they have any budget to think. If they do not, do not hold your breath.

The good news is Royal Poulin from North Bay chairs it and North Bay has learned how to create wealth and the first lesson of creating wealth is to work together which has proven difficult to do in many other jurisdictions in the North.

Michael Atkins is the president of Laurentian Publishing. Read more of his columns at www.northernontariobusiness.com