Dr. David Robinson

Let me try to convince you that Northern Ontario is uninhabited. It is a theory that explains a lot about the way the North is run.

The Government of Canada is doing it. The Government of Australia is doing it too. Let’s do it here in Northern Ontario. And just what is it? Governments are trying to figure out how to use a new economic concept to promote economic development.

Analysts across the country have accepted Gilles Duceppe’s analysis of the May second federal budget: It’s the next one that counts. Northerners should be glad, because the current budget has a big hole in it where Northern Ontario should be.

Predicting the future is easy if you are looking at the right signals, but it is hard to know which signals to look at. A cab driver I met in Denver last week might have been sending us one of those signals.

Ryan Minor is an accountant. Accountants like to think about money in and money out, and Ryan is especially interested in money going in and out of Northern Ontario.

When it comes to forestry, we’re a superpower” says Brian Emmett, Assistant Deputy Minister for the Canadian Forest Service. Canada is the third largest forest nation - with Russia first and Brazil second. We have 17 per cent of the world’s forests.

Sir Edward Robert Peacock was the son of a minister in Glengarry County, Ontario. He made a lot of money in business and figured out how to live forever. His story might interest Northern Ontario Business’ most successful and civic-minded readers.

Almost every report on the Northern Ontario economy includes the phrase “value-added wood products”.

Let’s assume the web is here to stay. Is there any way to make it benefit the North? One way is to apply the Golden Rule of Google: link and be linked.

Richard Florida is the new guru of economic development. His book, The Rise of the Creative Class and How it is Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, has become the new bible for city and state governments in the USA.