Next to the financial sector, the auto industry has received the most
attention from governments in Canada and the U.S. as they try to prevent
the collapse of ailing enterprises. The fate of that industry is especially
relevant to the Golden Horseshoe, the Canadian manufacturing heartland
that stretches from Niagara Falls around the western end of Lake Ontario and
extends all the way to Oshawa.

To address the region's declining fortunes, Ottawa and Ontario have provided
a $4-billion bailout package of emergency loans for Ford, Chrysler and
General Motors. The federal budget has also established the $1-billion
Southern Ontario Development Agency as part of its stimulus package. But
investors, executives, community leaders and politicians are holding their
breath. Is there still gold in the Golden Horseshoe?

I believe there is. The capital facilities, human resources and service capacity
of the Golden Horseshoe can be revitalized and redeployed to create new
wealth and meaningful employment for decades to come. But to do so will
require something more than temporary bailout packages and traditional
approaches to regional economic development.

The key to finding that \u201csomething more\u201d may well lie in \u201copen-source
problem solving\u201d - a technique employed by Toronto executive Rob McEwen
more than a decade ago to revitalize a dying gold mine at Red Lake, Ont.,
and turn it into one of the most productive lowest-cost gold mines in the
world. (The story is well told in the bookW ik inomics, by Don Tapscott and
Anthony D. Williams.)

When Mr. McEwen took over the Red Lake mine, the gold market was
depressed, the mine's costs were out of sight and its union refused to make
concessions. It looked like the end was near. (Sound familiar?) But Mr.
McEwen believed there was gold to be found. He gave his geologists a
\u201cstimulus package\u201d - $10-million for further exploration - and his faith was
rewarded when they brought in test results indicating rich new deposits on
the Red Lake property. But getting an accurate estimate of the gold's
location and value, and proceeding with development, proved frustratingly
elusive.

Then, in 1999, Mr. McEwen attended a seminar for young presidents at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He listened to the story of Linus
Torvalds and how he had assembled a world-class computer system over the
Internet by using the \u201copen source\u201d technique. At its heart was Mr. Torvalds's
willingness to reveal his computer code to the world and invite thousands of
anonymous programmers to vet and improve it.