Toronto: The Hard Luck Town

The big news this week in Canada is that the World Health Organization has put Toronto on its travel advisory list. And there is outrage. Yes, SARS has hit Toronto hard. But Torontonians, politicians, and pundits everywhere are crying foul. Admittedly, the measure may be extreme and alarmist.

What's curious, though, is the kind of alarm: it's the economic alarum that's sounding. People are upset because Toronto's tourism industry is going to suffer. They are worried more about the economy, it seems to me, than about health. (Hardly the best way to convince the WHO that TO should be removed from the travel list: "Hello? Dr. WHO? We think you should remove the travel advisory because our economy in Toronto will suffer") Convince people that this is an error, not by causing economic panic, but by explaining carefully that there is no need for a health panic. There's a difference between the cause of concern and the effects of the concern.

I agree that the biggest effect likely will be economic (I guess it already is). Or at least this will be the biggest effect on the largest number of people. Now, first let me say that I'm hardly jumping for joy at this fact. But I do see this as an opportunity of sorts, a lesson in economics, if you will, that Toronto might well learn and apply to its own ideas about economics in Canada.

Toronto is now learning what many other parts of Canada, especially Eastern Canada, have known for a long time: economics is about luck and politics as much as anything else. Places and regions don't choose to have poor economies. Newfoundland, for instance, did not choose to have its cod fishery go belly up. But people in Toronto would be the first to say, well you just have to deal with it. It's been said to many a Newfoundlander that in choosing to stay in Newfoundland instead of moving to Alberta or Toronto to find work, that person is "choosing" underemployment or a life of chronic unemployment.

The fact is in both cases, factors beyond people's control create both bouyant and trying economic conditions. Toronto has never felt itself out of economic control. It's always been able to point the finger from a position of relative economic superiority: Toronto is, by luck, conveniently central in a decentralized country, conveniently close also, to American industry, and conveniently located in the Canadian province that is also home to national capital. As a city it has benefitted and grown as much because of luck as because of planning.

I'm very sorry that Toronto or any city has to be worried about something like SARS (no matter how panicked that worry might be). I'm not one bit sorry, though, that Toronto is getting to learn an economic lesson: decisions made elsewhere, by powers greater than you--and decisions often made unfairly--nonetheless determine economic conditions.

Posted by Bush Whacker at April 27, 2003 10:05 AM