Toronto’s gurus have spoken. Richard Florida, and Roger Martin have produced a two-million-dollar, thirty-five page document entitled “Ontario in the Creative Age."
It calls on Premier McGuinty to “Make the mega-region as strong as it can be.” It seems to state that Northern Ontario is doomed.
Florida is big on creativity. He is the author of the international bestseller “The Rise of the Creative Class.” and Amazon Book of the Month, “Who's Your City?”, not to mention “The Flight of the Creative Class” and “Cities and the Creative Class.” He has even been named European Ambassador for Creativity and Innovation and is head of the Martin Prosperity Institute.
Roger Martin is the dean the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He holds the Premier's Chair in Competitiveness and Productivity and he has written a few books of his own. Martin lured Florida to Toronto in 2007.
Martin and Florida tell us that we are leaving the Industrial Age and entering the Age of Creativity. Growth in the Industrial Age was based on natural resources: future growth in Ontario will be based on clusters of creative industries. Toronto and the Golden Horseshoe region will do well. Northern Ontario will fall behind. Rural regions like Northern Ontario are “increasingly disconnected from the creative economy”. “This is not a desired outcome,” they say, “but it is our reality.”
The Martin/Florida vision for Northern Ontario is pretty grim. Sudbury Councilor Janet Gasperini thinks the report is really telling the government to forget the North - only the big cities matter. Ontario got rich selling Northern resources, but now it should focus on building a denser, more connected, creative and competitive Toronto.
There is no doubt creativity flourishes in big cities. Ontario will have to make its mega-city region more creative. It is true, the province has to focus on the Toronto mega-region. Northerners should support this part of the Florida-Martin vision.
But also we need our own Creative Society report – call it “Northern Ontario in the Creative Age.” Our report will applaud the effort to develop a creative mega-city. It will be especially positive if building a creative mega city gets the provincial government off our backs. Go ahead and focus on the big cities – just let us run our own affairs. The Creative North should make life easy for the province by developing our own growth plan and running it ourselves.
Then we should steal a few lessons from Martin and Florida. Their key argument is this: “the concentration of people and industries are the most powerful of all economic forces”. Clustered industries drive growth.
Follow that thought through. What industries are anchored in the North? Mining and forestry. Where should the mining and forestry clusters be? The answer is obvious even if some highly placed bureaucrats disagree. What is the provincial policy for locating education and research facilities for these two industries? Scatter them all over the province. Not smart. Ontario subsidizes mining engineering in great southern mining towns like Toronto and Kingston. Its major forestry program is at the University of Toronto. It made sense in 1907, but not now.
These provincially-funded programs are crucial for the creative clusters that Florida and Martin want to build, but they are in the wrong place. If the province wants to be an international powerhouse based on its natural resources, it has to support clustering of mining supply and services and value-added wood production. Clustering will only succeed around the natural anchors – the major forestry and mining cities. These cities are all in Northern Ontario.
Northerners have to keep explaining to every provincial official that all of the province’s mining and forestry related research and training facilities must be moved to Northern Ontario. Geographic clustering for forestry and mining can only succeed where the resources and the major production facilities are. Add the creative facilities and the clusters can take off.
We aren’t trying to make the south poorer with this advice. Sooner or later every northern dollar goes south. In fact, letting the Creative North develop its natural specializations based on forestry and mining will make Toronto the Great richer.
