THUNDER BAY -- A new report by the Northern Policy Institute is calling for major restructuring of FedNor.
The NPI report released Tuesday states the federal funding agency for Northern Ontario should be a stand-alone program, to better serve regional communities.
The FedNor budget is currently overseen by a board of directors, and it is part of the cabinet portfolio held by Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford.
The NPI report looks at ways FedNor could benefit from moving away from Industry Canada in order to stand on its own two feet.
Northern Policy Institute CEO Charles Cirtwill says there are five recommendations laid out in the report.
Those recommendations from the report include:
1. FedNor should be structured to allow for greater operational discretion and autonomy from Industry Canada.
2. FedNor should abandon its current project-centric approach of allocating disparate grants to a wide number of projects in favour of supporting a small number of larger investments designed to build the capacity of value-added and knowledge-intensive economic clusters.
3. FedNor should adopt formally the Growth Plan for Northern Ontario as the policy framework for the region.
4. FedNor should institutionalize a collaborative approach to program delivery by developing comprehensive five year formal partnership agreements with Ministry of Northern Development and Mines (MNDM) and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC) for larger investments that support the emerging priorities targeted in the Growth Plan for Northern Ontario.
5. Because Northern Ontario is not one homogenous region, the partnership agreements should focus on supporting SMART programs identified through a comprehensive process of consultative strategic
The NPI’s report isn’t the first call to have FedNor made a stand-alone agency.
Green Party MP Bruce Hyer (Thunder Bay – Superior North) was among the opposition members who’ve previously called for FedNor to be made a stand-alone agency.
Hyer says he’s glad to see the NPI’s recommendation.
