NORTHERN ECONOMIST 2.0

Sunday, 7 July 2019

Historical Canadian Government Data Sources

I recently received the following message from Ryan MacDonald at Statistics Canada:

“I recently came upon a number [of] scans done by our library to place the historical publications into pdfs. They can sometimes be a little difficult to search for, so I thought I would pass along a few links that may be of use to you or your colleagues in your research.”

So, I think a good way to further disseminate these historical economic data sources more broadly is to post the links here on Northern Economist. Please feel free to share.

Canada Year Book
<<http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.838186/publication.html>>

Tables of the trade and navigation of the Province of Canada for the year ... (1850-1908)
<<http://www.publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.843286/publication.html>>

Report of the Department of Customs containing the tables of imports, exports and navigation of the Dominion of Canada for the fiscal year ended Mar. 31 ... (1909-1916, 1918)
<<http://www.publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.843294/publication.html>>

Annual report of the trade of Canada (imports for consumption and exports) (1917, 1919)
<<http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.852124/publication.html>>

Trade of Canada = Commerce du Canada (1920-1939)
<<http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.851960/publication.html>>

Trade of Canada = Commerce du Canada (1939-1970)
<<http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.809303/publication.html>>

Imports, merchandise trade / Statistics Canada, External Trade Division = Importations, commerce de marchandises / Statistique Canada, Division du commerce extérieur (1970-2002)
<<http://publications.gc.ca/site/eng/9.809322/publication.html>>

In addition, if you are interested in a lot of official Government of Canada as well as provincial government publications, quite a few appear to have migrated onto a platform known as Internet Archive. For example, you can find Canadian Federal Government public accounts going back into the nineteenth century. That has come in handy for me given that my university library a couple of years back "deselected" all the paper copies of the federal public accounts. Given the growing trend away from paper, sources like the Internet Archive and the Statistics Canada links provided above will become increasingly dominant.

Wednesday, 3 July 2019

Italian Programming on OMNI in Thunder Bay Appears to Have Suddenly Returned

Last week, I posted about how the noon-day Italian newscasts on the OMNI channel on Shaw cable in Thunder Bay had disappeared. There used to be both a RAI broadcast from Italy as well as the OMNI network's Italian language newscast which covered Toronto, Canadian and international news including Italian items. This appeared to have been a somewhat arbitrary change given the size of the Italian community in Thunder Bay. I contacted OMNI via their contact page, I put a link to my blog post on my LinkedIn account and even forwarded a copy of my post to Corriere Canadese, Canada's Italian language newspaper all in the hopes of attracting some attention. I did hear back from Corriere Canadese and they expressed interest in the story but until today have yet to hear anything back from OMNI. However, flipping through my channels this morning, I noticed that all of a sudden, the noon-hour Italian newscast was back followed by a half hour Italian cooking show.

So it looks like I can go back to my practice of PVRing the OMNI Italian newscast out of Toronto for viewing in the evening in order to keep up my Italian as well as get a different perspective on the world news. It would be nice to have the other RAI newscast return too but hey, I suppose sometimes we have to take what we can get. Not sure what got things moving. Have not heard back from OMNI directly so hard to know. Perhaps it was contacting the Italian media community via Corriere Canadese that got things moving or the contacts on the LinkedIn network. In any event, thank you to whoever helped to get things moving. Hopefully, the Italian content is here to stay.

Monday, 1 July 2019

Happy Canada Day from Northern Economist

Well it is July 1st and the 152nd Anniversary of Canadian Confederation. In the time since 1867, Canada has grown from four eastern provinces with 3.4 million people to a country touching three seas spanning the northern half of the North American continent with ten provinces and three territories and a population today of just over 37 million people. By world population standards, we remain a small country but occupy a massive geographic space.

As a country, we have been truly blessed with peace, order and good government and have over the decades achieved a quality and quantity of life that is one of the highest in the world. It is true our history has not been perfect or free of injustice or inequality. We will face numerous challenges in the years to come both to deal with our past as well as dealing with a much more uncertain world as the recent few years have demonstrated.

Yet, whatever our divisions and challenges, we have had solid institutions and we need to combine those with an international effort to reach out to like-minded countries - many of them as small as we are - in an effort to build new alliances and networks with which to help shape and stabilize the world. That is our new challenge for the 21st century.

Just as Canada has grown over the last 152 years, so has Northern Ontario and the figure below plots the population of the five largest urban areas in the north from the earliest available city population figure from the Census of Canada to the 2016 census.

From small 19th century resource communities, all these cities have grown to quite sizeable centers though it is true they have in recent decades not kept pace with other parts of the province or country. Nevertheless, the future has yet to be written and opportunities abound. Happy Canada Day!

Thursday, 27 June 2019

Why Has OMNI Television Stopped Italian Programming in Thunder Bay?

My Shaw Cable package in Thunder Bay includes a channel (No. 195) called OMNI. As its website states: “OMNI is Canada’s only multilingual and multicultural television broadcaster, offering a wide range of ethnocultural and third-language programming to the country’s diverse communities. OMNI is available in more than 11 million households across Canada through its five local over-the-air television stations in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto (OMNI.1 and OMNI.2) and its national speciality channel – OMNI Regional, which is comprised of four regional channels and is offered as part of all digital basic television packages throughout the country. In Quebec, OMNI Regional has partnered with independent ethnic broadcaster, ICI Television, to offer French-language local programming to the province’s ethnic communities. OMNI offers a wide range of locally produced and acquired programming, including daily national news in Cantonese, Italian, Mandarin and Punjabi, current affairs programming and popular entertainment programming including Bollywood movies, Asian cinema, and Italian and Portuguese telenovelas.”

Now the channel available in Thunder Bay via SHAW appears to be some version of OMNI regional. Its two Toronto channels are OMNI1 and OMNI2 with OMNI1 offering a fair amount of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese programming while OMNI2 offers more Punjabi, Mandarin and Cantonese programming. Until last week, what I assume is OMNI regional here on Shaw in Thunder Bay had two Italian newscasts around noon – one its Toronto news program in Italian and another the RAI news broadcast from Italy. I used to watch them quite frequently and would even PVR them if I was unable to watch them during the noon hour period. Well, this week these seem to have disappeared and the OMNI channel’s programming in Thunder Bay seems to largely reflect OMNI2. When I contacted SHAW, they said that they have no control what OMNI provides, they just provide access to the Channel. I have contacted OMNI itself via their “Contact Us” link but have yet to hear back.

Not sure what has happened here given that there are nearly 3000 people in Thunder Bay whose first language is Italian (Thunder Bay’s CMA population in 2016 according to the Census was 121,620) and the entire community of Italian descent is probably close to 10,000. Italian appears to be the largest foreign first language group in Thunder Bay followed by Finnish at just under 2000. True it is an aging first language community but then so is the Italian community in the GTA which has access to OMNI1. In terms of some of the other first language groups in Thunder Bay with programming available on OMNI there is Cantonese (180), Mandarin (315), Punjabi (75), and Tagalog (200). Yet OMNI no longer has Italian programming from the OMNI regional feed available in Thunder Bay.

What has happened here? Not sure because I have not heard back from OMNI but my best educated guess is that this was a made in Toronto HQ one size fits all decision that decided that since SHAW is based in Western Canada (i.e. Vancouver and Calgary are the big centres there) the programming should reflect the community composition there. One would have expected a multicultural television broadcaster to have done a better job on its community composition home work, but these things happen. Hopefully, OMNI will come to its senses and put back an hour or so of Italian programing back on OMNI regional (or better yet add OMNI1 to the package feed that SHAW provides in Thunder Bay) and allow me to get back to watching Toronto area news reports done by Gianpietro Nagliati.

Thursday, 20 June 2019

Is This the End of Trying To Balance Ontario's Budget?

The Ford Government announced a major cabinet reshuffle this morning and it is obviously an attempt to reboot and rebrand a government that has run into difficulty in terms of its popularity – and particularly the popularity of the “Populist” Premier who obviously did not take kindly to be booed at this week’s Raptor’s Celebration. All politicians I believe have an deep rooted need to be liked but if it becomes a dominant characteristic it can lead to bad policy.

Obviously, the Premier has decided that the source of his current unpopularity is a function of the actions of three ministers in particular: 1) former Finance Minister Vic Fedeli who has now been put in the Economic Development Portfolio and replaced by former Environment Minister Rod Phillips, 2) former Child and Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod who is being replaced by the former Economic Development minister Todd Smith and 3) former education Minister Lisa Thompson who is being replaced by a cabinet newcomer – Stephen Lecce – on the eve of what will be contentious negotiations this summer as teacher’s contracts expire. There are a number of other changes – such as Caroline Mulroney moving out of the Attorney General position to Transport – and you can get the new list here. For those of you in the Northwest, Greg Rickford fortunately remains in charge of his portfolios.

There seem to be several themes here. First, moving ministers out of portfolios where there has been controversy and putting in new faces. It remains to be seen if the idea is to sell the same ideas with new faces or have an abrupt policy shift. Second, an increase in the number of GTA area ministers which given the population and clout of the region is probably a wise strategy and was an important omission the first time the cabinet was constructed. Third, an increase in the size of cabinet - from 21 to 28 – which will no doubt raise eyebrows in the Toronto area given the early move to reduce Toronto City council from 47 to 25.

In some respects, this cabinet shuffle probably is going to signal an end to attempts to enact major reforms and changes designed to put Ontario’s Finances on a more sustainable path. There is no doubt that some of the issues that affected people in health, education and social service sector were handled in a particularly ham-handed way but a move towards re-opening the taps wider in order to make a populist Premier more popular is not a good thing in the long run. However, the expansion of cabinet is an important symbol that says there is not going to be as firm an emphasis on reining in the deficit and debt. Indeed, it is very disappointing to see Vic Fedeli out of Finance given his energy level and steady hand when it came to the operations of government.

It will be an interesting summer.