Kathleen Wynne is a trail-blazer in many ways. She is the first female Premier of Ontario and the first openly gay person to hold that position. But she has also blazed policy trails. As Premier, she has quietly and methodically developed an integrated agenda for more broadly shared and inclusive economic growth. Ontario is a big province that is home to Toronto, an expensive superstar city; a thriving tech hub in Kitchener-Waterloo; and another large knowledge hub in Ottawa, the nation’s capital. But it also has lagging industrial centers like Windsor, across the river from Detroit, which has historically struggled with high unemployment rates, and large swaths of rural areas, many of which need basic infrastructural improvements.
To cope with the mounting economic and geographic inequality that her jurisdiction faces, Wynne has developed a broad agenda for more inclusive prosperity which brings together strategies for more affordable housing, better jobs, better access to education and healthcare, and greater investment in transit—all emphasizing greater investment in shared public goods. At a time when the U.S. is cutting such investments at the federal level and across a large number of states held by the GOP, Wynne’s agenda is a model of more inclusive prosperity.
[For more on this story by Richard Florida, go to https://www.citylab.com/life/2...e-prosperity/549995/]
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