Latest Policy Bytes

June 8, 2015 - I give a lot of talks about what is going on in Northern Ontario. Those sessions require me to cite data, lots of data: demographic data, health data, education data, economic data, and more. One of my favourite experiences is the quiet visit after the talk by some local expert. Often a subject expert or a local councilor or public servant. They almost always want to assure me that while they understand that the data I have just described applies to the region, or the district, or the province; it just doesn’t apply to their community.

May 22, 2015 - I take my leave from Northern Policy Institute this month and return to the federal government work I left a year ago. My residency with Laurentian University and Northern Policy Institute has been more than I could have hoped for in my quest to learn about all things Ring of Fire.

May 20, 2015 - Parent grant applications are underway in schools all over the Ontario North. Every May, school parent councils scramble to take advantage of the Ontario Ministry of Education’s coveted Parents Reaching Out (PRO) Grants. Few bother to ask: what’s being funded – and for what purpose? And what’s the actual impact been in Northern Ontario schools?

May 11, 2015 - The vast geographic area and great distances between communities pose significant challenges for the delivery of many services in rural and northern regions of Ontario.  The delivery of health care services is no exception.  There has been much research and several provincial reports that clearly show the health care services received in the north are not equivalent to those available in the south.  With so few large urban centres, access to specialized healthcare services for cancer and other serious conditions requires northerners to travel on a regular basis.

May 4, 2015 - For more than forty years, debates on economic development in Northern Ontario have been dominated by several themes. The first of these is that primary industries are key to the region’s prosperity now and in the future. The second is that Northern Ontario provides more funding to Ontario through royalties and taxes paid than it receives in services. The third is that the north is of limited national and global significance. Finally, many observers think that policies and programming in the north can be framed with only passing reference to global trends and circumstances.

April 28, 2015 - The response to my April column about recent successes for young people here in our region was met with a mix of relief and skepticism.  Relief that here at last we had some good news; skepticism that the news wasn’t all that good since it reflected more hitting bottom than getting better. In fact, I think one commentator used the phrase “rock bottom.” If this is “rock bottom” I will take it.

April 13, 2015 - The cards have been shuffled on the ownership and history of the Ring of Fire.

April 7, 2015 - Recently, the use of winter roads and access trails have become increasingly unreliable as temperatures rise and weather patterns become unpredictable. Many First Nations communities in Northern Ontario are vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change, since they depend on consistent cold weather during winter to sustain their economic, social, and traditional ways of life. Community members here and across all of northern Canada, as well as scientists, describe climate change as gradual in the region until 10 years ago, when weather patterns began to change significantly. According to the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources (CIER), “seasonal precipitation, the number of frost-free days, and the frequency of severe weather-related events have all been in greater flux. Predictions about global warming, even at such high latitudes, forecast dramatic increases up to eight degrees in average temperature through the rest of the century, which will further degrade winter transportation.”[i]

April 1, 2015 - In both Northeastern and Northwestern Ontario 17-34 year olds are leaving in droves. My question is, do they know how good they have it here at home?

March 4, 2015 - What is the one thing that would make living in Ontario’s far North communities better?