Latest Policy Bytes

February 27, 2017 - We save for retirement. We draw up wills. But how many of us invest the same resources into planning for our own end of life care? For such a significant event in our lives, death is one we appear to give little thought to. In a culture of self-improvement, we seem fixated with living our best lives, but are less concerned with how we are going to die. Perhaps it is because we naively assume that we will die at home or perhaps we are fearful of death and avoid thinking about the topic. Whatever the reason, with an aging population and a financially strained healthcare system, it is one we need to address.   

February 13, 2017 - Near the end of 2016, Charles Sousa, Ontario’s Finance Minister, gave a talk in Thunder Bay. As far as standard talks go, it was a pretty good one. Something happened, however, during the question and answer period that I found quite unsettling. It wasn’t something Sousa did - it was something several leading members of the Thunder Bay community did.

January 30, 2017 - “The grass is always greener,” is a sentiment echoed by many northerners in regards to employment opportunities and salaries in the region. Many young workers have their eyes set on Southern Ontario in the hopes of finding a job with high wages, leaving the north behind for greener pastures.

January 16, 2017 - Here’s a puzzle: 20 percent of Indigenous “tourism businesses…are located in… British Columbia,” which attracts “one in four visitors.” At the same time, Ontario has 31 percent of all Indigenous tourism businesses in Canada, yet two percent of visitors from their “key markets…experienced [Indigenous] culture” in 2012. This difference means that Northern Ontario’s Indigenous tourism industry has plenty of room to grow. Since British Columbia enjoys a higher demand for this type of tourism, it can offer several best practices to create a more dynamic Indigenous tourism sector in the North. These lessons can provide positive spillovers such as increased revenue, a larger and more diverse economy, and stronger social ties amongst communities and First Nations.[1]

January 9, 2017 - The Ontario Medical Association celebrated the holidays in 2016 by sending nicely wrapped boxes of red tape to MPPs. The gifts were a protest about the new regulations and red tape that the OMA said would result from the passage of Bill 41. These types of protests are not new. Every regulated industry and occupation complain bitterly about onerous or outdated regulation.

December 12, 2016 - One hundred million Canadians by 2100. This is the bold goal set for us by the Century Initiative (a group of business leaders and Canadian intellectuals) and now endorsed by Prime Minister Trudeau’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth. But I want to highlight something missing from this glorious plan for 100 million Canadians.

November 11, 2016 - Athletics and sports play a formative role in the education of First Nations youth. The 2016 Nishnawbe Aski Nation Summer Sports Festival, held this past June, provided another living example.

November 25, 2016 - Alisha Hill’s initial apprehensions disappeared a year ago when she met her Kindergarten class.  Like most teachers heading to Northern Ontario to teach for the first time in a First Nations community, she had read the tragic stories and was painfully aware of the troubles affecting reserve life.   

November 29, 2016 - Tapping into the Internet has tremendous potential for bridging the vast distances in First Nations education – and opening up new horizons for students in remote, fly-in communities.

November 25, 2016 - Over the past twenty-five years, Wahsa Distance Education Centre (WDEC), has pushed at the limits of technology in the Northern education frontier. Since his arrival as Principal in 1995, Darrin Head has seen WDEC through a succession of dramatic technological changes in the delivery of its programs – from comparatively crude instructional radio to SMART board technology and social media.