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Remember this feeling, Ontario

The Guelph Mercury, 6/3/2009

Just look at us. Broke. Depressed. Pitiful. Once the richest province in Confederation, we’re reduced to getting a handout from Ottawa.

We were once the land of unstoppable prosperity, a beacon of opportunity for thousands of newcomers. Now we’re learning again what it’s like to bear the brunt of a recession.

Remember this feeling, Ontario. Because once this economy turns around, let’s try to remain a little humble. The one good thing about hard times is they make you appreciate what you had. They give you some perspective for the good times.

This week, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan told us that the bailout of General Motors would push Ontario’s deficit to the highest it’s ever been — a record $18.5 billion. For those counting, that’s about two and a half times what New Brunswick’s government will spend in its entirety this year.

But for all the talk about how going through this rough patch will turn General Motors into a lean, modern and green company, what about the Canadian province that has shelled out $3.5 billion to keep GM’s plants open here?

Will Ontario become leaner, meaner, more ready for the new economy, too? Hard to say. Manufacturing took this province of loggers, fur traders and farmers and turned it into an economic powerhouse. Factories and plants built up our cities, swelled our population and made us the biggest and richest economy in Canada.

Today, we’re still clinging to an industry that gave us so much prosperity. A full third of all exports out of this province still come from one sector — vehicles and auto parts. We’ve spent billions to save a few thousand auto sector jobs, leaving our finances more embarrassing than the Phoenix Coyotes’.

How many more stories do we need of neighbourhoods like those in Windsor, where desperate homeowners are selling their properties for $90,000? Or of one-industry towns where the locals worry that if the big auto parts factory closes shop, they’ll become a place people only visit on warm weekends? Or of a provincial government that had to sink another billion or 10 in debt as it scrambles to stop the bleeding?

What does this endless supply of bad news do to the psyche of a province that has for generations seen itself as the country’s economic engine? What does it mean when the province’s unemployed begin to see more opportunity in Fort McMurray or Halifax?

Ontario had been up for so long we’d forgotten what it’s like to be down. As our cousins in Newfoundland and Saskatchewan stock up on new SUVs, we’re struggling to figure out what our future holds.

Does it mean an Ontario that lives within its means, saves more and has less personal debt, less reckless spending, and less stubborn reliance on the things that have worked in the past?

Yes, half the things that are manufactured in Canada are still made here. But manufacturing had been telling us for years we can’t count on it forever.

There have been plenty of warning signs.

In the lead up to the 2007 provincial election, Bay Street economists pointed out Ontarians’ standard of living had plummeted — from a peak of 15 per cent above the Canadian average in the mid-1980s to just more than 5 per cent. They said it would continue to drop.

But all we wanted to talk about in that election was a Conservative proposal to give government funding for faith-based schooling. The economy? Boring. Religion? Now we’re talking.

Then, more and more workers started walking out of factories with pink slips rather than paycheques in hand. Something was happening. Bad times had arrived.

When things turn around, let’s try to remember this feeling.