Records relate to the work of business and industrial development and policy throughout Northwestern Ontario.

The role of the Northwestern Ontario Development Association / Northwestern Ontario Development Council was to support and promote business and industrial development across the Northwestern Ontario region. This involved supporting individual businesses and entrepreneurs; organizing and carrying out research on existing and potential industries and availability of services in the region; facilitating the flow of information between governments, researchers, existing businesses and prospective businesses; and advocating for the needs of Northwestern Ontario to multiple levels of government. Transportation, utilities, and financial incentives are recurring themes; mining, forestry, manufacturing, agriculture, tourism, and more are also heavily reflected in the records.

These records reflect the work of Alexander Phillips as General Manager of NODA/NODC, and include correspondence with municipalities, government, business leaders, entrepreneurs, colleagues in other regions, and others, and cover a wide variety of subjects. The division of records into series reflects how they were initially kept and filed by NODA; searching within the collection will be valuable to researchers as files related to a particular subject may be found in multiple locations.

Phillips' own files are also integrated into this collection, and so records reflecting his work with the Quetico Provincial Park Advisory Committee, the Mississippi River Parkway Commission, and various other organizations can also be found within the collection. There is additionally a small amount of personal material.