Prince Edward County by the numbers: Slim pickings

Eastern Ontario Rural Policy Development Project is a mouthful to say, but it is also a mouthful worth remembering if for no other reason than the sobering numbers coming out of it. A joint effort of the Eastern Ontario Wardens Caucus, the Community Futures Development Corporations (CFDCs) of Eastern Ontario and the Martintown-based Ontario East Economic Development Commission, the project has released two new reports at the end of March which confirms statistically what those of us living here know anecdotally. Both Prince Edward County in particular and Eastern Ontario as a region are facing a bleak future. And even an influx of retirees and weekenders from the GTA; 500,000 summertime beachgoers at Sandbanks; and a dozen or so relatively new wineries along with about three dozen recent vintage vineyards aren’t going to save the day, although all incoming dollars will be more than welcome.

On March 27, the Eastern Ontario Rural Policy Development Project released its optimistically titled 41-page report A Prosperity Plan for Eastern Ontario. Three days later it released the more prosaic sounding 63-page report A Profile of Eastern Ontario. Both are available in their entirety online; the former at http://www.hastingscounty.com/files/IT/ProsperityPlanEasternOntarioMAR2707.pdf and the latter at http://www.eowc.org/Images/Reports/Profile_Eastern_Ont-Regional_Data-Mar3107.pdf

From the sundry graphs, there’s a mother lode of information to be extracted, albeit discomfiting. While the stats from Statistics Canada are six years old, the relationship of the numbers to geography remains interesting. The average personal income in the County was $27,356 in 2001 -- $7,845 below the provincial average. In neighboring Belleville, the average personal income was $28,890; in Quinte West it was $27,841; and in Northumberland County average personal income was $30,030.

The Intelligencer, Belleville’s Osprey-owned daily newspaper, correctly observed of the region in general what is also true of the County in particular: “Eastern Ontarians tend to be poorer, older and have fewer economic opportunities than the rest of the province. The result is less education, poorer health and higher taxes on the backs of households that can't afford them, say local politicians, bureaucrats and health officials.”