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The war for the woods

Have you ever heard of Schrödinger’s cat? It was the original high-tech zombie – alive and dead at the same time. Northern development is lot like Schrödinger’ cat. Schrödinger invented this story to show how strange quantum mechanics can be.

Have you ever heard of Schrödinger’s cat? It was the original high-tech zombie – alive and dead at the same time. Northern development is lot like Schrödinger’ cat.

Schrödinger invented this story to show how strange quantum mechanics can be. He imagined a  cat  locked in a steel box with a vial of poison, a Geiger counter, and a tiny bit of some radioactive substance. If even one atom of the radioactive substance decays, the Geiger counter spills the poison, and the cat is dead. If no atom decays, the cat is alive. According to the quantum theory, the right way to describe the situation is to say the cat is both alive and dead until you open the box.

Business people in Northern Ontario are a like a whole litter of  Schrödinger’s cats. They can’t plan because they don’t know what government policy will be. If you can’t plan, you may already be dead. But you can’t be sure.

Government decisions have to come first in climate change policy, for example. If you believe Harper will resist carbon taxes and carbon quotas for the next 10 years, you won’t invest in a green building. If you think he will suddenly accept what the vast majority of economists and scientists are saying, you should invest in a green building.

Harpers’ head is like the steel box in this case, and his climate policy is like Schrödinger's cat.

Or take the car industry. Does anyone really doubt it can’t produce hydrogen and electric motors for cars? Workable designs have been around for years; they just can’t compete with gasoline motors when petroleum is subsidized. If Ontario commits to a transportation changeover, the auto industry could meet the target in a few years. But the auto industry will not commit to zero carbon until the government commits.

Increasing hydrogen and electric vehicle production means ramping up hydrogen and electric production. That means committing to nuclear power.  It also will require a carbon tax to level the playing field. These are actions only government can undertake. Not a single Ontario politician has the guts to say this.

Government has to commit  before other players can make plans. It isn’t enough to promise dramatic changes in the distant future. To be credible, a policy has to be backed by irreversible commitments. Until they are, no car company will start to convert to electric or hydrogen vehicles. Canada’s car industry could be wiped out as a result.

The North is in the same situation as the auto industry. We need to know if our leaders are still committed to planned underdevelopment for the North. We want to hear that they are ready to really commit to a value-added development strategy. Until they open the steel box, we won’t know if we are dead or alive.

What are the signs of genuine commitment to Northern development? Here are six simple tests:

One key to a value-added strategy is the people who design and make products that other people want to buy. The first test of a development strategy is to ask whether it will produce these people quickly and in large numbers. Score today? 1 out of 10.

The schools are our biggest investment in developing talent.  You can tell if we have a believable development strategy by the contributions from schools. Score today? 1 out of 10.

Advanced training is a necessary part of any value-added strategy. To promote forest-based industry, a school of industrial design in Northern Ontario and focussing on wood products is absolutely necessary. Score today? 0 / 10.

A value-added strategy must include a commitment to build programs in wood-structure engineering in Northern universities. Score today? 0 / 10.

Economies develop when the people are in charge of their own resources. Northern forest, mineral and water resources are all controlled by Queen’s Park. Score today? -1 / 10.

A value-added economy begins when resources are easily diverted to the use that adds the most value locally. Score today? 0 / 10.

Total score for value-added leadership? 1/60. This is great news. It has to get better.

Dave Robinson is an economist with the Institute for Northern Ontario Research at Laurentian
University.
drobinson@laurentian.ca