The province gave him an impossible job. As northwestern Ontario economic facilitator, Dr. Bob Rosehart was supposed to work with local people and businesses to help inspire a new generation of growth in the Northwest. Did he succeed? Who knows. He did come up with an interesting list of issues. And One REALLY BIG IDEA.
The terms of reference made it sound easy. Rosehart would develop a list of questions and present a report to the Minister of Northern Development and Mines. The report would tell the minister about “opportunities for regional stakeholders to leverage current government resources and programs to benefit a locally driven strategic plan,” i.e., telling the minister how people in the Northwest can get more government money. The report would also give the minister an analysis of local resources.
Don’t ask why the minister and his staff didn’t already have this information. The economic crisis in the Northwest must have snuck up on the government one night, while ministers were congratulating themselves. That would explain why the terms of reference included statements like,” The government is working with Northerners to create a dynamic future for the region,” and "The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade’s (MEDT) Regional and Local Economies in Transition program has been a valuable tool to manage community distress.”
Government press releases are expected to puff up the government. Putting the same puffery into the terms of reference suggests that Dr. Rosehart has concluded that the government is doing a good job. All he had to do was facilitate discussion and present a report with no serious criticisms.
That’s what Dr. Rosehart did. The report released March 21 focuses almost entirely on current issues and short-term government initiatives. Naturally, the response from Northern Development and Mines Minister, Michael Gravelle, was very positive. He called it “thoughtful and wide-ranging” and said it “will help us build a strong foundation for a new generation of growth in northwestern Ontario and across the North.”
Others were disappointed. An editorial in the Working Forest called it an “all encompassing, uninspiring report” that “failed to analyze any of the reasons that the author’s previous report has not been successful.” It is certainly true that the economic analysis is weak, but if the province wanted sound economic analysis, it wouldn’t have hired a chemical engineer.
To be fair, the province didn’t want a long-term plan. The “Places to Grow” initiative is supposed to come up with the comprehensive and long-approach. It has the resources of 16 ministries to draw on. The Places to Grow Initiative for the North was launched after Dr. Rosehart was appointed. No wonder he focused on responding to the short-term decline of the economy of northwestern Ontario.
The one area where Dr. Rosehart seems to have slipped his leash is the forestry sector. Instead of offering modest suggestions for the short-term, Dr Rosehart said something really dramatic.
“One of the most common themes during this study,” he wrote, “has been the need for Ontario to have significant reform of the forest land tenure system.”
Changing the tenure system is revolutionary. It is the equivalent of a land reform program in Zimbabwe or Peru. Get the tenures system right and the economy will prosper. Stay with what we have and the northern economy will never make a transition to value-added wood products.
Dr. Rosehart envisions a series of “quasi-independent, ecosystem-based authorities.” Each would have a board of directors representing society and the users. These local boards would control wood allocation. They would also re-allocate wood from users that fail to use their current allocation.
This is a call for community control of the forest. The innovation is that Rosehart wants the communities to be defined, not as towns, but as all the people in the local ecosystem. He is a bit vague about how to find the boundaries of an ecosystem, but after all, he is a chemical engineer. The principle is right.
And one more revolutionary thought – when Dr. Rosehart says it will take a minimum of three to five years, he is telling us that the government could move very fast if it wanted to.
Dave Robinson is an economist with the Institute for Northern Ontario Research at Laurentian
University.
drobinson@laurentian.ca
