The Growth Plan for Northern Ontario was released on March 4, 2011 and nearly six years on
it is probably time to see what impact it has had on the economy of northern
Ontario. The 25-year plan was to
guide provincial decision-making and investment in northern Ontario with the
aim of strengthening the regional economy and its ultimate goal was to
strengthen the economy of the North by:
- Diversifying the region's traditional
resource-based industries
- Stimulating new investment and
entrepreneurship
- Nurturing new and emerging sectors with
high growth potential.
Of course, evaluating the success of the Growth Plan for
Northern Ontario can be a complicated endeavor as it is very important to
decide what to measure. The Plan
itself did have a section on monitoring and performance measures – Section 8.4 that
read as follows:
8.4 Monitoring and Performance Measures
8.4.1 The Minister of Infrastructure
and the Minister of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry will jointly
monitor overall implementation of this Plan and report on what progress
provincial ministries and municipalities have made to implement the policies in
this Plan.
8.4.2 The Minister of Infrastructure
and the Minister of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry will work with
external partners to develop a set of performance indicators to assist in Plan
monitoring and reporting as set out in Policy 8.4.1.
8.4.3 Success in achieving this
Plan's outcomes will, in part, be measured by assessing progress in:
- attracting
investment and business growth in Northern Ontario
- diversifying
the North's economic base
- supporting
education and skills development of the North's workforce
- increasing
the involvement of Aboriginal peoples in the northern economy
- improving
the connectivity of the northern population though information
technologies.
It is
further acknowledged that long-term progress in these areas requires sustained,
co-ordinated efforts by the Province and all its external partners.
8.4.4 The Province is further
committed to the development of performance measures for ministry-specific
initiatives that support implementation of the policies in this Plan.
Now the indicators suggested by this section can be
considered important indicators of success but actually measuring them is a
much more difficult endeavor and in the end one will have to measure some of
them indirectly. While it might be
possible to measure government investments in aboriginal education and skills
development, how does one measure diversifying the North’s economic base or
increasing the involvement of Aboriginal people’s in the northern economy?
So in the absence to my knowledge of any official effort to yet
present comprehensive evidence as to what the overall progress and evaluation of
the Growth Plan for Northern Ontario has been to date, I have decided to devote
several blog posts in the coming weeks to assessing the impact of the plan on
economic performance and activity in northern Ontario. And of course, as an economist there are some pretty standard measures or indicators of what I would term to be economic growth. After all, if something is called a "Growth Plan" then one needs to see growth over the time period spanned by the plan. Stay tuned!
