Porter's arrival marks watershed moment for North

This week, Porter Airlines celebrated the start of its new three-times-daily flights between Timmins and Toronto Island.

At a ceremony in the Timmins Victor M. Power Airport, Porter President Robert Deluce and Timmins Mayor Tom Laughren spoke of what the expansion of service means to both the airline and the Northern Ontario city.

New business and tourism opportunities, a welcome alternative for travellers, a validation of a unique approach to air travel – the launch is all of that.

But it also marks a watershed moment for Northern Ontario.

For too many years, northerners watched in utter despair as their services shrank, offices closed and commercial operations withered. The mining sector struggled and the forest products sector imploded. Young people left town, grocery stores closed, banks shuttered branches and transportation companies cut routes.

Those were very hard times, when many northern towns wondered if they’d get from one end of the year to the other.

And the hard times were made so much more painful by the contrast with an exuberantly wealthy south, which was then motoring along on the coat-tails of an American hyper-boom.

There was much talk, in those dark days, of sunset industries and yesterday’s regions. Academics spoke openly of perhaps shutting down some of Ontario’s struggling northern towns and moving their residents to larger centres where they wouldn’t be such a drain on the public purse. Fingers wagged; lectures were delivered; people pitied their raggedy-arsed northern cousins.

Well, times change, and Ontario’s economic world is…slowly, slowly…beginning to shift from paper to rock, from south to north, from autos to minerals.

It’s been a long time coming.

And if it lasts long enough – China’s gargantuan appetites and global markets willing –Northern Ontario may have a chance, finally, to fashion a strong foundation for a sustainable economy that will carry it along into a rosy future.

In the meantime, let’s hope northerners will be gracious, understanding and un-gloating in their demeanour as they watch their raggedy-arsed southern counterparts try to come to terms with an economy that has been gutted by global forces well beyond their control.

Front groups should be up-front about funding

Canadians have a right to know who is spending big money to influence their most important public policy decisions, particularly if that money originates outside the country.

The issue erupted with the opening of Northern Gateway Pipeline hearings in British Columbia this week, spurred by the federal government’s public attack on foreign-funded groups that “hijack” the regulatory process as part of a larger agenda that seeks to steer the Canadian economy away from “dirty” natural resource extraction.

Tides Foundation, which "washes" money for publicity shy American donors, has been pointed to as a concern, based on the work of B.C. blogger Vivian Krause.

Canadian environmental lobbyists don’t deny there is a lot of American money washing through their organizations. They justify it on the basis that there is a lot of foreign money flowing to the rapacious corporate side too.

Contributions from American philanthropic foundations like Tides help level the playing field so that the voices of concerned Canadians can be clearly heard above the corporate din, they argue.

One Tides defender – Vancouver writer, politician and urban food activist Peter Ladner – suggests we shouldn’t stress about it. Canada’s natural resources have always been a playground for foreigners. We’ve grown rich on it.

“Since when were organizations outside this country not ‘interfering’ with Canada’s natural resources?” Ladner asks in a mid-December article reproduced on the Tides Canada website. “Starting with the Hudson’s Bay Company, Canada has depended on all manner of foreign investors to make us the rich nation we are today.”

These arguments may be true. They may be valid. But they completely miss the point.

Canada is a small country that has long been dominated by foreign interests. Psychologically, we’re still a bit of a Rupert’s Land, far too accustomed to taking direction from other people in other countries. In our quest to become our own people, we struggle to cast off the heavy baggage of Empire and Manifest Destiny and foreign adventurers of every stripe.

That will be an uphill battle for us if we continue to let people in other parts of the world believe it’s their God-given right to interfere in our affairs.

Canadians have a right to determine their own destiny. Other people can pitch their arguments at us. They can openly lavish time, praise and gobs of money on Canadians who reflect their world views. They can posture and rant and huff and puff to their hearts’ content.

But they shouldn’t expect to get away with camouflaging their activities through phony front groups or sleight-of-hand funding mechanisms.

At a minimum, Canadians can and should demand funding transparency from individuals, companies and organizations who want to participate in the public processes that will guide our fundamental policy, political and economic decisions.