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The Lindsay Post is running a weekly series of questions, with answers by both the "Yes" and "No" sides of the issues.
Question #27:
What would your system of government do to ensure strong economic
development that will keep young people in our communities?
Goin' Down The Road was the 1970 Canadian classic small-budget movie about two amiable bumblers from Nova Scotia who threw their belongings into the back of a beaten-up chunk of Detroit iron and headed off down the road to find work in Toronto.
Audiences laughed until they cried watching them try to cope with the culture shock of the big city lifestyle after the relative quiet of a small Maritime town.
Despite the humour of the movie, we also understood the stark reality of the depressed economy of their hometown which compelled them to leave home in order to find work.
The largest single component of the economy of the City of Kawartha Lakes is agriculture. An analysis of the problems of making a living off the family farm would fill a book, and it is not within the scope of a hundred "Counterpoint" columns to solve that one. The City's "Feast O' Fall" won't cut it, that's for sure.
The bright kids finishing high-school will stay here or not, depending upon economic opportunities. We are well positioned here in the Kawarthas, close to markets and with good transportation facilities. We have a highly-trained, well-motivated young workforce. What they need is jobs.
Jobs in the future will depend upon our ability to encourage meaningful self-employment, and upon our ability to encourage solid employers to stay in, or relocate to, our community. Some municipal governments offer incentive packages to induce new industry. This can be problematic and unfair if it forces existing business to subsidize their own competition.
Probably the best incentive that we can offer to foster a strong local economy is lower taxes. Lower taxes benefit all businesses, the well-established and the newcomers alike. Lower taxes, combined with the obvious advantage of the quieter pace of the rural lifestyle that Victoria County offers, will encourage our kids to stay in the community. We believe the evidence is overwhelming that amalgamation has raised, not lowered taxes.
The "No" side will say that only the single-tier system of government is able to provide the strong inducements necessary to build a strong economy. They will point to the City's department of economic development and probably take credit (as do some candidates for council, if their election brochures are any example) for every new business that has relocated here in the past three years.
If departments of economic development are what it takes to help expand the local economy, it is worth noting that, in 1999, the economic development department of Victoria County won 6 national and international awards for economic development. We will be willing to bet too, that Victoria County's economic development department had a much smaller budget than the City's.
A bit of good, healthy competition among lower-tier municipalities within the two-tier system of government can be the catalyst that creates the economic climate to foster business expansion.
Local chambers of commerce, farm organizations, tourism and manufacturer's associations can also encourage economic growth. Departments of economic development could help, provided that they don't get in the way of local initiative.
People, not governments, make for strong economies. It might be ironic, but it's also true, that smaller local governments, even if there are more of them, give us less government than we have with the centralized mega-city. It's the high tax regime of our mega-city which will force our kids into goin' down the road.