Demand aid North’s forestry is due
Sault Star Editorial Staff
Tuesday, March 08, 2005 - 09:00
Editorials - Municipalities, MPPs and MPs across Northern Ontario should back NDP Leader Howard Hampton’s call for more than $150 million a year to help the region’s forestry sector.
Why not? As Hampton points out, the province has just announced more than $680 million in grants and tax credits to assist in growth of Casino Windsor, General Motors and film and television production. Ottawa earmarked an additional $200 million for GM.
Both levels of government argue this is a good investment in Ontario’s future, creating employment.
So what is Northern Ontario, chopped liver? How about employment and the economy north of the French River?
Loggers and pulp-mill workers have to feed their families, just as auto workers do.
But Hampton says that in the first year of the Liberals’ mandate in Ontario, the North has lost 6,000 jobs, mostly in the forest sector in communities such as Chapleau, Opasatika and Sturgeon Falls.
That kind of news doesn’t seem to inspire the Toronto media, however, so southern politicians act as though it never happened. If a tree-cutter’s job falls in the Northern Ontario forest and there is no one there from Toronto to hear him scream in frustration, has he made a noise? Apparently not.
Northern representatives had better start making so much noise that it is heard all the way to Queen’s Park and Ottawa.
Part of governments’ role is to provide infrastructure, and that’s what both upper levels need to do better in Northern Ontario. As Hampton says, assistance with plant modernization could help meet environmental goals at the same time as enhancing employment.
Helping make energy efficiency improvements and build co-generation plants could be especially significant, since provincial hikes in electricity prices have already badly hurt the forestry sector and worse is expected.
Partisan politics must be set aside, with leaders of all stripes supporting a call for greater investment in Northern Ontario. The region has lost ridings as the southern Ontario population burgeons, and representatives who are left need to shout louder to be heard.
This is not whining. It’s demanding what the North is due as part of the Ontario and Canadian fabric. Southern power brokers can’t be allowed to keep turning a deaf ear.(*)
