Worst is behind us now: North's future looks bright, for all the wrong reasons.

As I write, January approaches. Finally, some staying power for winter, and time to consider the year that was and the year to come.

The trick is to find hope somewhere in the dustbin of war mongering and propaganda that plagues our national and international politics.

I can predict, without fear of contradiction, that if I am still breathing in six months I will be 55 years old. I have been expecting for some time now to experience the attendant spurt of wisdom that is rumoured to be associated with these developments. Perhaps this will be the year.

I grant, as I watch the carnage of exposed business greed and incompetence of the past year (most of it engineered by white males who look a lot like me) wisdom appears to be in short supply. Hope springs eternal.

It will be not be a bad economic year for Northern Ontario for all the wrong reasons. The softwood lumber debacle has already taken its pound of flesh, the mining sector is already downsized and tourism is already on its knees. To come, the collapse of the car business.

The dividend of low interest rates is going to shrink as the year moves on. Much of the housing boom will play out this year and demand will drop.

Although the relative tourism chaos in Northern Ontario (the collapse of the province's Northern tourism marketing partnership) will get cleared up, but stimulating demand will not be easy as everyone waits with baited breath to see if there will be war in Iraq.

Having lived through the last war in Iraq, it does not promise to be pretty, although wars are generally not a bad thing for the mining business.

More intriguing will be our political year.

The premier has now guaranteed there will be a spring election. His spending promises cannot be sustained and he needs to get the election out of the way before that becomes patently obvious to everyone. He has taken the sting out of the Mike Harris years for many with his energy and education investments, but is it enough? His key to success will be Dalton McGuinty. So far he does not seem to have caught on. My prediction is a minority government one way or the other and I do not think it matters much for Northern Ontario. We have been off the radar screen for so long anything is probably an improvement. True to form, if there is a Liberal provincial government we will send more Tories to Toronto than the present session.

Federal politics are fascinating. Paul Martin without question has things wrapped up as we speak, but his halo is going to be so damaged by the time the leadership contest is over a majority government for the Liberals will be very iffy. His problem is that he has peaked too soon, and his many weaknesses have been forgotten and unchallenged. The media will get to him soon and feel it is their obligation to cut him down to size. It will not be pretty. Worse still, Stephen Harper will start to look reasonable and take more seats in Ontario than anyone thinks possible. The Liberals will take more seats in Quebec.

For entertainment value alone, watching Jean Chretien play out the game until February after the new leader is chosen in November will be worth the price of admission.

The Toronto Maple Leafs will not win the Stanley Cup, but they will come closer than you think. This is called the modified Blue Jay plan. Remember you could not get a seat at the Skydome until the Jays won the World Series, not once, but twice. The reward for such competence has been their almost disappearance. The Leafs will not make the same mistake. They will get close, but not win. Brilliant.

There are two pieces of particularly good news for the New Year.

The first is that somehow the Northern Ontario Medical School is moving ahead, seemingly staffing up intelligently. How it operates from two locations I do not know, but why not? It needs our support.

Secondly, it is unlikely Osama Bin Laden has put any Northern Ontario locations on his priority list.

We will continue to live in peace, where there is space, fresh air, and a modicum of civility most of the world would die for.

We are very lucky.

Happy New Year.

Michael Atkins is the president of Northern Ontario Business.

Read more of his columns online at www.northernontariobusiness.com.