Evaluating Northern Ontario's Growth Plan - Part I

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:

1. attracting investment and business growth in Northern Ontario
2. diversifying the North's economic base
3. supporting education and skills development of the North's workforce
4. increasing the involvement of Aboriginal peoples in the northern economy
5. 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!