CARL CLUTCHEY
04/23/2010

Invoking everything from his Irish family roots to Johnny Cash, veteran Queen‘s Park bureaucrat David Lindsay did his best Thursday to endear himself to some of Northwestern Ontario‘s movers and shakers.

“I find that when I‘m here, one of the first things people ask you is: ’Are you from Northern Ontario?‘”an upbeat Lindsay, a keynote speaker at the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association‘s annual meeting in Marathon, said Thursday.

He added: “I have 35 years of coming to Northern Ontario for work or because of family connections, so I have passion for this part of the country and I think it has a great future,”

A former mining-sector auditor, Lindsay, 52, was appointed nine months ago as deputy minister of this region‘s key department – Northern Development, Mines and Forestry.

He‘s the department‘s top civil servant, reporting directly to the minister, Thunder Bay-Superior North MPP Michael Gravelle.

Though the Northwest continues to suffer hard economic times, the Toronto-based Lindsay believes regulatory changes to the province‘s mining and forestry sector will eventually return the region to an economic powerhouse.

“The reforms to the mining and forestry (industries) that the government has embraced are monumental (so) it‘s exciting to be part of this ministry at this juncture,” he enthused.

Lindsay, whose $241,000 salary in 2009 made the province‘s Sunshine List of public-sector workers who earn more than $100,000, said the ministry is particularly committed to assisting in the development of a potentially huge chromite mine 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay.

The so-called Ring of Fire zone is expected to create thousands of jobs and provide North America‘s first localized source of stainless steel.

And yet, said Lindsay, “in southern Ontario, (Ring of Fire) is still a bit like a Johnny Cash song – they‘re not sure what it‘s all about.”

A Ring of Fire co-ordinator position is going to be established with the Northern Development ministry, Lindsay noted.

While acknowledging the downturn in the pulp and lumber industry across the Northwest, Lindsay said the future development of alternative forestry products – such as the manufacture of car doors out of wood fibre – has a lot of potential.

And the ministry is committed, said Lindsay, to making the changes in forestry policy to allow alternative producers to access wood from Crown forests.

As an aside, Lindsay credited Gravelle with changing the government‘s mindset on wood allocation.

The ministry is currently reviewing more than 100 proposals from companies interested in accessing new Crown wood sources, “but we have to see what is realistic and legitimate,” Lindsay said.

“It‘s great to be in the ground floor on this and working with you,” Lindsay told the delegates.