Essay: Great Lakes, Great Region

You might not be automatically turned on by a report called “The Vital Connection: Reclaiming Great Lakes Economic Leadership in the Bi-National U.S.-Canadian region.” In fact, if you found one lying around, a glance at that title might make you read the wallpaper instead.

But this is a fascinating document. If you do pick it up, or download it, as I did, you are likely to learn things about our region you never imagined. In some ways, this study should make you both confident about our collective future – and worried at the same time.

To start with the good news, the Canadian provinces and American states surrounding the lakes are an economic powerhouse, far more so than most of their citizens’ suspect.

Nearly two-thirds of all trade between the United States and Canada flows through the Great lakes states. That’s more than $1.2 Billion dollars every day. The lakes themselves contain ninety percent of our nations’ supplies of fresh water. Additionally, entire industries and communities have grown up around them.

For a long time, most of us barely realized that we were one economic zone that straddled two nations. Then came September 11th. Suddenly, we became paranoid about security, especially after a totally false story claimed that the hijackers had come through Canada.

Suddenly, the border was real. Inspections were taken seriously. And it became common to face long waits to get across.

Some of this has been good. It is clear that since the fall of 2001 more people on both sides of the border have come to realize how closely our economies and our interests are intertwined, and how much we depend on each other. This study also goes beyond those concerns to detail the threat our economies face from globalization.

Most importantly, it is designed to help both nations take steps to move from our declining industrial legacy to a modern knowledge-based economy. Both countries have a lot of work to do.

On some issues, however, it seems clear that more Canadians get it than we do. To risk messing up the ecology of the Great Lakes by water depletion is to risk dooming all of us.

Yet most states, including Michigan, have yet to ratify the first baby step in the right direction, the Great Lakes compact. We have been far too slow to do much to check the spread of invasive species that arrive in the ballast water of ocean-going vessels.

And for whatever reason, we have been content to depend almost totally on an ancient privately owned bridge for half a billion dollars a year in trade. If anything happened to the Ambassador Bridge, Michigan and Ontario would be plunged into economic depression.

Yet we have been reluctant to commit to any alternative. The Vital Connection makes a number of recommendations aimed at building a joint future. Not all of them will come to pass. But some are essential. What we don’t need to do is to keep putting our heads in the sand. Especially when the old familiar tides are running out.

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Comments

[mike]

Dear Jack and John.

last time i saw any numbers on those arrested for cannabis in MI was around 15 thousand.

thats what MI share of the over 800,000 lastyear of cannabis arrests given by the FBI.

so if cannabis was being regulated - many millions of dollars could be spent on vital building projects like the bridge you so rightfully mention.