Dr. David Robinson

Let’s imagine that our beloved minister of Northern development and mines, Michael Gravelle, decides to consult one of the world’s leading experts on development for areas like Northern Ontario.

My students should have paid me for giving them the chance to see Bob Rae in action. Not just because Rae is a professional negotiator and the class deals with Nash Bargaining theory.

It should be easy to write a quick summary of the economy of Northern Ontario. After all, I have been writing about the Northern economy for years. I am one of the so-called “experts” that the CBC calls for comments.

One of the best things about teaching is that you actually learn more than your students do. I teach Natural Resource Economics at Laurentian University and I’ve learned a few strange things about Ontario’s mining policy.

Here we are halfway though the playoff game in Canada’s Export Industry League. Alberta’s Big Oil Consortium (BOC) has been whipping Central Canada Manufacturing (CCM). Energy exports have seen a $63.

The famous reading room of the British Library has a very high ceiling. Many deep thinkers worked there, including Wilde, Hayek, Stoker, Gandhi, Kipling, Orwell, George Shaw, Mark Twain, Lenin, Woolf, Rimbaud, H. G. Wells and Karl Marx.

The formula I use for this column is simple: take an issue relevant for Northern Ontario, add some real economics, and try to make it entertaining. Unfortunately, I want to talk regional accounting.

Northern MPPs have come to a time of reckoning. They hold the balance of power in Ontario. The five NDPers and one Conservative can change the North. In the next few months we get to see if they have the vision and the guts to act.

You can send your kid to camps that specialize in kayaking and leadership; martial arts and leadership; crafts, sailing and leadership; or leadership and horseback riding. Business schools offer programs in leadership.

Ontario’s northwest is one of the last great frontiers. It is a country-sized chunk of land still outside of the transportation network that links productive communities to the global economy.