Northern Economist 2.0

Tuesday 16 May 2017

The Northern Ontario Growth Plan: A Summary Evaluation


The Ontario government released the Growth Plan for Northern Ontario on March 4, 2011 in response to years of slow growth and economic stagnation in northern Ontario. In an effort to improve 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. The goal was strengthening 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.
After five years, it was worth examining key economic indicators to see what if any improvements have occurred with respect to the economy of northern Ontario.  After a series of posts examining employment, new investment spending, consumer and business bankruptcies and employment composition, what conclusions can be drawn?

Sunday 7 May 2017

Evaluating Northern Ontario's Growth Plan-Part V: Economic Diversification


This is the fifth in a series of posts in which I am presenting evidence evaluating the Growth Plan for Northern Ontario, which was released on March 4, 2011.  The 25-year plan was to guide provincial decision-making and investment in northern Ontario with the aim of strengthening the regional economy. The goal was strengthening 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.
While the provincial government did commit itself to the development of performance measures for ministry specific initiatives that supported the implementation of the plan, I will be using a broader set of indicators of overall economic performance that are supported by the availability of readily accessible public data. 

My first post was an overview while my second post looked at employment.  My third post looked at new investment spending as measured by building permits and my fourth post looked at consumer and business bankruptcies as an indicator of economic health. In this fifth post, I will be looking at changes in the composition of employment between 2011 and 2016 as an indicator of diversification.

Measuring diversification can be a complicated issue.  Is a diversified economy one more reliant on services rather than primary industries - in which case we are already there as the bulk of employment in northern Ontario is service oriented.  Is a diversified economy one in which we are less reliant on resource extraction or on any one sector?  Given the growing reliance on public sector employment in northern Ontario one might argue we have become less diversified in recent years.  In short, any measure of economic diversity is bound to be imperfect.

Saturday 8 April 2017

Evaluating Northern Ontario's Growth Plan-Part III: Investment Spending


This is the third in a series of posts in which I am presenting evidence evaluating the Growth Plan for Northern Ontario, which was released on March 4, 2011.  The 25-year plan was to guide provincial decision-making and investment in northern Ontario with the aim of strengthening the regional economy. The goal was strengthening 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.
While the provincial government did commit itself to the development of performance measures for ministry specific initiatives that supported the implementation of the plan, I will be using a broader set of indicators of overall economic performance that are supported by the availability of readily accessible public data.  My first post was an overview of the series while my second post looked at employment. In this third post, I will be looking at new investment spending as measured by building permits.

Saturday 25 March 2017

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!

Thursday 23 February 2012

Does Ontario Need Another Growth Plan?


Last Saturday’s Globe and Mail (February 18, B6) ran an article titled “Rebuilding Ontario: A Plan for the Way Forward” which laid out a discussion of Ontario's economic future. For Northerners, all the talk of decline and the need for diversification was strangely familiar.  Indeed, one can best describe what is happening as the “Northern Ontarioization” of Ontario’s economic discourse as Ontario tries to decide how to grow its future economy in the wake of the Drummond Report, which seems to have finally crystallized the fact that Empire Ontario has slipped into decline.  Of course, some of us saw the eclipse of Ontario a bit earlier than that (check out End of Empire, National Post, February 19, 2005, FP19) but better late than never.

The Globe and Mail described four options for the province to get its “mojo back”. They were financial services, technology, health care and natural resources. Missing was that perennial Northern Ontario favorite - tourism.  Despite the talk of putting a casino in Toronto, it is unlikely to see Ontario reinventing itself as Vegas North. Vegas style tourism requires a degree of individual and entrepreneurial freedom that regulatory Ontario is unlikely to acquire anytime soon.

Of all these options, the one most likely to kick start Ontario’s economy is the natural resource sector. The mining frontier in Ontario’s North – especially the so-called Ring of Fire- can serve as an investment frontier for the rest of the province much like mining and forestry did in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  However, this does require that the province embrace its North rather than treat it as a remote relic of the economic past.  Here, the contrast is made with Quebec.  According to the Globe and Mail: “Rather than shun its expansive north, Quebec is emphasizing it, hashing out an ambitious 25-year project dubbed “Plan Nord”.  Quebec is betting its future on developing mining, energy and forestry resources located far north of its major cities. Ontario could adopt a similar scheme.”

Really?  How interesting.  The fact is Ontario has also developed a Northern Growth Plan – a point the Globe and Mail article seemed to have missed but then Canada’s “national” newspaper is based in Toronto.  Part of what is wrong with Ontario’s economy is a myopic economic vision that does not look outside of Toronto.  Perhaps that is why since the Northern Growth Plan has been released, all that has resulted is more planning.  Given the dominance of Toronto vision in Ontario and its government, the chromite deposits of the Ring of Fire could only be developed quickly if they were at the corner of Yonge and Bloor.

Ontario does not need a growth plan.  Ontario needs a set of concrete actions to develop its northern resource frontier as an investment frontier for the province.  The North can be a place for infrastructure investment and value-added processing that can drive economic growth in Ontario.  The North can be a frontier for the deployment of Ontario’s labour skills and human capital.  Given the capital and technology intensive nature of modern mining, the North can also be a frontier for high technology industries.  And, the financial service industry in Toronto got its start in the financing of mining ventures in Northern Ontario.  Financing new mining ventures in the North can once again be a source of growth for Toronto’s financial sector.  What is Ontario waiting for?