Printable version Email this article

 This item appeared in the May, 2002 edition of The Publisher.

Serge Lavoie

The 2001 census has made official what has been suspected for some time. Rural Canada is shrinking, both in population and importance to the Canadian psyche. (Rural-based resources are still important, but urban dwellers have a diminished understanding of where they come from and how they get into their cities.)

Increasingly, the debate surrounding Rural Canada centres on its lack of relevance to our changing demographic and its poor use of scarce resources due to a lack of economies of scale. Rural Canada is difficult to service and expensive to service. It may no longer be worth the effort with only 20 percent of Canadians – and virtually no new immigrants – choosing to live there.

This is the spin you hear when Urban Canada is making the arguments, which it increasingly is these days. Urban Canada not only points to its fast growing population but to its dwindling resources as cash strapped provincial and federal governments balance their own books by downloading their problems to municipalities. If you are a careful reader of news relating to municipalities, as I have become, you can’t help noticing that the agenda is quickly shifting to Urban Canada and away from Rural Canada.

Urban Canada not only needs more money, say its most ardent supporters, but it needs more autonomy, more elevated profile, its own federal ministry, its own charter. Nothing less than a return to the concept of city-states will do for some of Canada’s mega-municipalities (I don’t have to name them).

Apart from the people who live there, there are relatively few champions of Rural Canada. Rural issues, even at the provincial level, are lumped in with agriculture. The lone federal program is the Rural Secretariat, a department of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Its sole minister is Secretary of State Andy Mitchell, a junior minister under the direction of the Minister of Agriculture.

With a modest budget and a severely limited power base, Andy Mitchell appears to be generating some impressive profile building. The tools at his disposal are small by federal government standards. The Canadian Rural Partnership funds pilot projects with a program budget of $12 million over four years. The National Rural Conference is held every other year. The second one, held this past April in PEI, attracted nearly 500 enthusiastic rural community activities including a truly heartening core group of young people.

The teens came together to create a Rural Youth Forum. As they told the Secretary of State, “youth aren’t just the future, they are the present.” The message was clear: listen to us now, and work with us now, or we may not be in Rural Canada in the future.

Another group of delegates came together to form a National Rural Network, a single umbrella of dozens of community and social development organizations with the main purpose of forging a stronger voice and a higher profile.

They could start with the status of the Rural Secretariat and the Secretary of State for Rural Development. Its alignment with the ministry of agriculture sends the wrong signal about the diversity of Rural Canada today. What about the rural communities dependant on forestry, fishing and the other resource sectors? What about the rural and remote communities that want to make the leap into the knowledge economy? To many at the conference, their fondest hope was to see the formation of a rural ministry, with a senior minister (Andy Mitchell was seen as the ideal candidate; he’s that well liked) and a full seat at the table.

Why does this matter to community newspapers? Simple. Community newspapers rely on healthy, vibrant populations that need retail stores, financial services and services of all kinds. Take away the people and the services soon follow. Community newspapers loose their support base.

Some 50 per cent of CCNA members publish in communities with rural postal codes. That’s 50 per cent of titles, not circulation or economic activity. These member papers are small but their significance is beyond all economic measure. Some of them exist as labours of love.

Rural community newspapers look different than their urban/suburban/exurban peers. They are primarily paid circulation, with limited national or regional advertising. The news is different – more grassroots, more detailed, more specific. When the community you serve is small, you report everything.

At this level in the newspaper industry, community papers have a different role to play. They aren’t simply media properties to be measured for their available cash flow (although cash flow is good, very good). They are often engines of community economic development, a role well beyond the run-of-the-mill community boosterism you can find at most newspapers, including dailies.

This unique role has not escaped the notice of Secretary of State Mitchell. He has been visiting with regional association representatives and community newspaper publishers, making contact, seeking input and considering possible connections. OCNA is actively pursuing the coordination of some pilot projects involving community newspapers. CCNA has accepted every opportunity of consulting with Mitchell and has not been shy about briefing him on the challenges and needs of the sector.

The news from Statistics Canada about a shrinking rural sector presents the classic “glass half full, glass half empty” scenario. The news will either scare politicians and community leaders into positive action, or it will create a sense of futility.

If it’s the latter, will the last person who mouths platitudes about the importance of Rural Canada, but does nothing to protect it, please turn off the lights and close the door, because the game will be over.

[Serge Lavoie is CCNA’s Executive Director.]

(916 words)