Atkins

We are in an odd position in Ontario. The current government is nominally in charge but has no authority to do anything. There is a lame-duck premier and no parliament.

The province of Ontario is broke. The Canadian government, while certainly not broke, is cutting back substantially on program spending. It wants less government for financial and ideological reasons. Northern Ontario is going to get hammered.

I have been recommending the establishment of something like a Northern Policy Institute (NPI) since I was a little boy in short pants.

With nothing better to do a few weekends ago I made a quick calculation of how many hours I’ve worked since launching Northern Life newspaper in Sudbury in the fall of 1973.

Occasionally, we do the right thing in northern Ontario. We focus on the right stuff, stay with it, attract broad-based support, stop competing with one another long enough to get something done and we move the hash marks forward.

It was greatly anticipated, widely commented on, had our attention for a few days, and then receded back into the ether as quickly as it arrived.

When I was 11 or 12 and living in Toronto, I acquired a tiny crystal radio set which could keep me entertained for hours, mostly under the covers at night long after I was supposed to be asleep.

There is a term which more or less began with Karl Marx and his Communist Manifesto, and went on to be popularized by Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian-American economist of some renown.

Unless you have been on holiday in the Himalayas without access to a cell phone, newspapers, computers, or television and radio signals, you have learned about the appalling living conditions in Attawapiskat.

I’m in Halifax. It is Nov. 11. The rain is pelting down from the aftermath of yet another tropical storm making its way up the coast.