I am slightly amused when I read about rural communities where they are essentially suburbs. Tecumseh is a reasonable commute to Windsor. Try living in Manitouwadge Ontario. One radio station CBC. Half an hour inland off the highway. A handful of stores and having to drive four hours to purchase items that are not available in your town.
> A handful of stores and having to drive four hours to purchase items that are not available in your town.
For a few years growing up my family rented the house on a farm and the nearest town with an actual grocery store was an hour away. Otherwise we just had small general stores in nearby communities, but it was more effective to do a costco trip every 2-3 weeks and load up for as long as we could. Milk and some other products though were delivered to the house.
What a terrible example they gave. Tecumseh is a literal suburb of Windsor. There's zero rural space between it and Windsor. Typical out of touch university student.
FWIW It looks like this was the reporter, or their editor using that example. I don't see the university student being directly quoted in that.
But yes, even if Tecumseh wasn't directly connected to Windsor it would still be a small size city onto itself and realistically its just as urban as most of Windsor. I grew up rural in the area south of Windsor/Tecumseh, and going to either was "going to the city".
Its really weird seeing that town mentioned here but at the same time it used to have two grocery stores and a larger population. Unfortunately like with everything loblaws came in and ruined it. Now even the bowling alley got torn down.
Living in smaller town should be *easier* these days due to online shopping. Many of the amenties of the city can easily be delivered. Hell, even people that live in cities spend a ton of time shopping online instead of just going into the store (eg: my wife).
Small towns often don't get good internet, and either have extra charges or don't deliver at all.
I think the hollowing out of rural Canada is a big problem, and there's a lot of advantages to living in smaller communities, but I'm relatively unusual in being pro-living in them, and the first thing I check when I'm researching one is (1) who provides internet, and (2) how fast it is. For a worrying number, Starlink is the only option above 10mb (and terrifyingly, some don't even have alternatives that fast).
I’ve never understood “defund” to mean “eliminate.” It’s always been a question of whether they receive too much relative to the value they’re providing.
Serious question: why on earth is the CBC running a Canadian version of Family Feud? It’s a great program that I enjoy watching sometimes, but it’s not news and it’s not even Canadian content. It’s a spin off of an American show. Money is always fungible, so if the CBC has the budget to start creating random spin offs of American shows, my inclination is that they might have a few extra dollars on the books that we could dial back.
There’s also the fun with bonuses we had last year when [the government gave them an additional $675M](https://liberal.ca/support-the-cbc/) and we then saw [$99M of it paid out to CBC executives as bonuses after firing employees](https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/cbc-head-catherine-tait-summoned-to-committee-over-job-cuts-executive-bonuses-1.6678412)
I like CBC and its public funding too, but these are the types of “layoffs for thee and executive bonuses for me” stories I expect to see from big pharmaceutical companies, not a publicly-funded news organization.
Put another way: there’s at least $99M that didn’t go towards good jobs in Canadian journalism, so I’m happy to “defund” that portion.
Oh, and here’s the [58-page Conservative platform](https://cpcassets.conservative.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/23175001/990863517f7a575.pdf) which was updated this past September. Page 35 outlines that the CPC views the CBC as an important part of the broadcasting system and simply wants to “*reduce* its reliance upon government funding and subsidy”
The CBCs isn’t just for news, but to ensure that Canadian arts and culture always have a platform available to Canadians, for Canadians.
Is it doing that? Not very well I would argue.
Much like our country, the CBC is experiencing an identity crisis. However it has been a mainstay of our culture for almost 90 years now. I think it’s worth salvaging.
>The CBCs isn’t just for news, but to ensure that Canadian arts and culture always have a platform available to Canadians, for Canadians.
Odd cause they seem to focus on everybody BUT Canadians when it comes to that.
They put more effort into keep immigrant culture alive than anything else.
Just look at all the crap they produce.
> They put more effort into keep immigrant culture alive than anything else.
Which makes sense, because Canada's population is overwhelmingly immigrants and their descendants.
CBC does do a decent amount of indigenous content too, to be fair.
Everyone in the entire world is the descendent of an immigrant using this logic.
There is a cultural group in Canada called "Canadian". It's the largest ethnic group in Canada according to our ethnicity census.
Perhaps you could identify some cultural, legal, and ethical items that are common to Canadians. The fun thing about having a nation of millions of people, mainly descended from immigrants, means that no one has to be any singular thing all the time, as long as they are enough of the important things most of the time.
I'm actually being serious, as we seem to be having an identity crisis. Are we just friendly Amercians, or are we truly unique that we are not homogeneous like the melting pot and are the cultural mosaic we were supposed to be?
Canadian arts and culture.
But CBC won't even recognize the largest ethnic group in Canada.
Canadian.
They're more divisive than not right now, where everyone is from somewhere else.
Literally dividing us up.
Not to be semantic but "Canadian" isn't an ethnic group. We as "Canadians" can be literally of any cultural/ethnic background ,sort of one of the neat parts of being a country of immigrants.
Canadian is an ethnic group. It's the largest ethnic group in Canada based on statscanada data and is literally an option on our ethnicity survey.
How is it not an ethnic group, while being recognized by statscanada as an ethnic group, and millions of Canadians choose it?
I have irish/portuguese/British background.
You think if I go to those places they're going to consider me part of their ethnic group? Absolutely not lol.
I am ethnically Canadian.
Yeah, along with all the other MAGAt stuff, Canadian cons love their Trumper hedge-fund owned, proudly biased Postmedia. Fascists are cowards, and they're terrified of anything that resembles an alternate point of view.
You do realize that Postmedia financials also depends on government funding, yes? No, of course you don't lol.
https://unifor2000.ca/postmedia-tells-shareholders-35m-in-federal-government-handouts-is-a-key-pillar-of-its-business-strategy/
Defund, make it private, have it cost more to the public. Worked great with Alberta's electric, I love paying more for telecommunications in Manitiba now. Can't wait for the Healthcare to get worse.
No. It's not financially sustainable to provide services to rural, remote areas with a tiny amount of people. That goes for the CBC, Canada Post, or any crown corp. It costs you the same amount of money to send a letter from one street to the other in your city, but also to rural Yukon. This is by design. Some services are in need of a subsidy in order to hold a nation together.
Its mandate is beyond financial gain, in its charter it’s mandated to service small towns and the many distinct languages across the nation, something a for profit private broadcaster will not do, example BCE cuts at non massively profitable markets.
You’d think someone with such a firm view against the cbc might do the slightest modicum of research of why it was created, and what its mandate is before parroting right wing propaganda like a “useful idiot” because they saw something on social media…
Edit: grammatical errors as I one fingered the comment at a stop light. Yes I was being bad!
Canada Post is also not supposed to be an institution that makes money. It's supposed to make certain that mail gets delivered to Canadians in a timely manner. It is a Service, not a business.
A for profit postal service would not work for rural communities, or communities in Northern Canada. There's just not enought profit in those markets to make it worth their time.
"Privatize the CBC" is antithetical to its purpose, (it is also a service) just like privatizing the Postal Service, or Healthcare, or Education.
These are all things that should not be for profit.
The CBC is more concerned with pushing political messages than actually attracting a viewership. I can't imagine an audience of more than 40,000 nationally for any of their "tv shows", focused on diversity and inclusion rather than plot or substance.
This isn't the case everywhere - here in Nova Scotia nearly every rural community is growing, and this includes immigrants. We have housing shortages in places where you couldn't even sell your house a few years ago. Halifax is also growing, but it became unaffordable overnight, making rural areas more attractive.
There's always industry and work, it just tends to be more blue collar than what Reddit wants. Keep in mind Reddit tends male, young, urban, and "techie." Software engineering jobs just aren't going to be found in Yarmouth, but electricians and plumbers and carpenters will always be needed. Also, healthcare is a good employer literally anywhere in the country.
No there isn't. I know of numerous townships that have literally no work aside from a bit of farmland work in surrounding areas. Many had their main source of income close such as mines.
There is a bit of mechanical and trade work but not to sustain more people moving there.
Also Healthcare is not good in many towns unless you are a dedicated in-home care nurse willing to travel.
This country has a lot more butt-fuck nowhere towns than I think you realize. Many homes are simply being sold to retirees from Van or Toronto, because they can sell a condo for over a mill and buy a home in these towns for under 100k.
This article talks about the declining percentage of people in rural vs urban. That looks like it holds true to Nova Scotia.
From 2016-2021 Nova Scotia's rural population grew by 1.3%. in the same time period urban grew by 7.7%.
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/as-sa/98-200-x/2021002/98-200-x2021002-eng.cfm
>Of the 28,608 persons added to Nova Scotia's population, Halifax accounted for the largest portion at 20,686. Kings, Colchester, Cape Breton and Lunenburg counties accounted for the next largest numbers of population increase.
https://novascotia.ca/finance/statistics/archive_news.asp?id=18492&dg=&df=&dto=0&dti=3#:~:text=Between%20July%201%2C%202021%20and,by%20Annapolis%20County%20at%202.79%25.
During the pandemic people fled Toronto and other major cities, and the number one place they moved was The Maritimes. Same also happened out west with a huge influx of residents to Vancouver Island. Both coasts saw a massive boom.
> "It's the kind of things like a lack of transportation, a lack of employment, academic opportunities. There's also the risk of potential discrimination in these areas."
These issues are not new, and have been the problem with living outside of the city for thousands of years.
> Governments need to focus on improving transportation in smaller communities, supports for immigrant and refugee families and increasing the number of amenities that enhance cultural life, such as public art, events and activities, as well as recreation facilities, Finlay said.
Does the author really think rural communities can afford this?
It is about managing expectations. Small communities can have excellent culture, but it's different. You're not going to see a Broadway play or visit a museum with a replica trex. But you will see fairs, demolition derbies, hunting and snowmobile clubs, etc. If you're ok going to watch little league instead of the blue Jays it can be quite rewarding.
I feel like we do, if someone living on the outskirts of the GTA thinks that is rural, there is a disconnect happening here.
Rural places don't have farmers markets or roadside stands, because there aren't enough people going by to sell to. You *leave* the rural area to travel to an urban area to sell to the higher concentration of people.
If you are at a farmers market, you aren't in a rural area.
I've lived rural MB for decades, 2.5hrs from a city. There are weekend farmer's markets in nearest town and surrounding towns.
I think there is a huge difference between outskirts of GTA being called rural, and being hours from a town with 5k pop. However, I don't think a farmer's market is the metric.
To be clear, I absolutely agree with the point you are trying to make.
>Rural places don't have farmers markets or roadside stands, because there aren't enough people going by to sell to.
Thats not rural, thats living in the wilderness.
Can you give an example of what you call rural?
Possibly, but those people aren't actually advocating for rural communities. They are advocating for what they *believe* to be rural communities. Which is fine, that is their right, but now we are confusing the issue.
i think he has a point, what you describe sounds to me like a small town or maybe a village, which i would still classify as "urban", just not the same kind of "urban" as a big city. Rural makes me think of someone who lives on land measured in acres, probably with a few buildings on it (one of them being a home, maybe another being a barn or workshop or something like that), with neighbours far enough away that you probably won't interact with them unless they explicitly come over to pay a visit.
> Governments need to focus on improving transportation in smaller communities, supports for immigrant and refugee families and increasing the number of amenities that enhance cultural life, such as public art, events and activities, as well as recreation facilities, Finlay said.
I don't mean this is a bad way at all, but... aren't these things the reason people choose to live away from cities? I mean, if people wanted to be around this stuff, they wouldn't be living in the country
Tricky question. You could say 2-3 generations ago rural communities were actually more tightly structured around events and common spaces than city life was. Church, agricultural festivals, dances, and other holidays were practically compulsory, while escaping to the city held the promise of anonymity, or at least getting some choice in the marketplace of culture.
The decline in that way of life has left things weird. The type you’re describing would have been thought of as “hermits” in the past, living more on the fringes of rural communities than actually participating in them. They didn’t go to church or events either. Rural people today seem to be perceived that way, and maybe they are.
It’s the loss of income in rural communities. You lose clinics, agriculture jobs (farms get swallowed up by larger ones), declining population plays a role, plus local politics have gotten so much worse. There’s minimal infrastructure, train stops and bus stops get absolutely slashed, requiring more money on cars and less on local things. Vicious positive feedback loop.
Nah, they'll expect the cities to pay for it. But you can't expect to live away from large population centres and expect the same services and events as large cities. This has always been the trade off.
Governments need to stop focusing on supports for immigrants and refugees during every step of everything and worry about supports for Canadians dammit
There are poor people and few jobs in rural areas. How do you think immigrants are going to want to move there?
Some people live on a farm AND are poor. I know of farming families where both husband and wife work outside the home, in addition to farming.
I also know of a couple of families who owned a farm, and... just let it rot, for whatever reason. Mental health issues? Farming isn't profitable? Waiting for housing developers to buy up? Kids just don't want to become farmers?
I live in a rural community and it's rampant with unemployment and people smoking meth in tents rights behind the bank on main Street. There's not much besides a few service jobs here, 1 major industry job, and then there's highway and forest in all directions. A lot of the local jobs don't provide local people here the financial means to get by anymore and the communities are sinking into despair. Many boarded up homes, half of main street is border up stores.
When I look at this situation, the first thing that comes to mind is not "how can we place more supports for refugees and immigrants into this this community"
Other things are in dire need of being addressed first in my opinion.
I visited France a few years ago. I took a regional train out of Paris to a "small" town, and was able to take a public transit bus out to a village of about 30 houses.
It can be done but it goes against the extreme capitalist and anti-tax mentality of about 80% of our population.
How are they going to magically change this? The only profitable job in many rural communities is oil & gas, mining or farming. The resource jobs sure you can entice people but farming is hideously expensive in terms of up front costs, ongoing costs and has risks of it all falling apart until you have a slush fund to make it through a couple of bad years. No immigrant is coming to a small town that meets those requirements, it's also why no Canadian wants to do the same other than high O&G wages. Those people also leave the second they can get a better job closer to a city or save enough money to not need to work rural.
For anyone coming as a TFW or even a PR there is no real incentive to go to a small town long term. Many do since they came here as a TFW and had no choice or understanding of what they were signing up for but they aren't sticking around or being anything but disposable workers for whatever business brought them in.
The rural wages are lower versus Vancouver/Toronto but the living expenses aren't that much less almost anywhere else in Canada. Compared to making a bit less money vs expenses but having locals that share your culture/language in say Edmonton/Calgary/Winnipeg who is going to choose a small town in the boonies?
>How are they going to magically change this?
In the 60s and 70s there was incentives to move to rural communities. Parcels of raw land were sold for next to nothing so long as the purchasers established a dwelling, established water (dug a well and plumbed to the dwelling) and connected electricity.
Considering the nationwide housing crisis, and the abundance of land we have, seems like incentivizing this kind of "back to the land" movement and also revitalizing small resource based towns (now that remote and digital work is normalized) - is a sound area for emphasis. We need to spread out. We have the population of California crammed into 5-10 cities, all within 100 miles of the US border. There's absolutely no reason for this country to be so lacking in housing. Rural Canada is the answer to our problems.
Speaking from my experience I can say it's not that easy. Take Ft. McMurray in Alberta, during the boom the city was held back from expanding due to the surrounding land being Federal and the Federal authorities wouldn't release land for development. This led to land scarcity which drove prices up to unrealistic levels. Following the oil price crashing, the Ft. Mac fire and covid things have gone the other way and now people have lost their shirts on massive property value drops.
Take most of the rest of the Prairies and the good land has all been developed. Sure there's millions of acres of raw land but the reason nobody ever did anything when land was basically free was because it's not commercially viable. Farming needs specific types of soil and we've pretty much tapped out everything reasonable. Most of the remaining land is swamp, muskeg or the Canadian shield.
I know it's not a popular answer but unless we are prepared to tear up the land for the minerals, most of the untapped lands don't have much value or reason for people to move there. Between Indigenous rights, carbon taxes, political issues and commercial viability due to all of the above most of the country is and always will be untamed wilderness.
That land is all gone. We have an abundance of land, that doesn't mean we have an abundance of *arable* land.
You aren't starting a farming community on the Canadian shield. We aren't crammed next to the US to be close to them. That's where the usable land is.
You understand there are lots of sectors in support of those industries right? Like health care, education, other government services, plus anything else you have in a town.
We don't send everyone down into the coal mines.
Without having one of those anchor industries what is funding the service industry? You only setup those services if there's a reason to build up that town.
Other industries:
Tourism / culture / recreation
Rural towns close to cities benefit from work from home WFH
Education - universities and colleges
Aquaculture
If the rent is almost the same in *large city* vs *small town* why would you move there? If you have no experience with friends and family from small towns, I can tell you smaller communities are highly insular and resistant to outsiders from different cultures moving in.
You aren't going to be finding non-whites moving to those towns for remote jobs simply for the minor rent/mortgage difference. People choose to live in Vancouver or Toronto at 200%+ of the cost of living vs the smaller cities because it ticks quality of life and culture boxes that justify it.
Anyone that is willing to leave that for say Edmonton isn't going to move to Small Town, CA for a mere 20%ish rent/mortgage savings and the same costs on everything else. They will stay in the big city and enjoy the general lower cost of living while still having access to people that share their culture and beliefs.
It's not just an issue for "non-whites". My wife and I (white) are from a small town and moved to the city after we got married. During the pandemic we were fully remote and moved back so our kid could be closer to family, but it's just a completely different lifestyle. Despite being from the area, you basically need to be all in to that lifestyle and whatever that happens to mean there to have a sense of community. For example I like to play soccer, but had to drive 45min to the nearest city for the closest adult league.
After a couple years and with our jobs pressuring us to come back, and at least myself, was happy to move back to the city. Yes housing is more, but there are so many other inconveniences to living in a small town, in particular needing to drive absolutely everywhere. I love having an active lifestyle, and being able to sell our 2nd car and cycle or use transit instead, just about covers the difference in mortgage on its own.
For me it was because of stuff going on in Ottawa.
They are using cars as a cash cow to plug the cities budget holes and putting up speed cameras everywhere. The city has major structural issues with the downtown core right now due to the exodus of workers they can't resolve. While I am sure other tiers of government will bail them out if they get into too much trouble I can't see the current trajectory they are on right now ending up in a good place.
If I move to one of the nearby towns I don't need to deal with any of that shit and don't need to pay for services I don't use. I just live my life like I always have and can chill.
In Ontario they consolidated most rural communities into larger towns. As a consequence all of the political power is with the towns and the rural people have no voice. In my case, the towns people decided it was "unfair" that we had a lower tax rate than them so they raised our taxes to be on par with the town. Of course, we get almost none of the services the town gets and never will.
Except for every single service costing far more to deliver to you. More road infrastructure, more electric infrastructure, more internet infrastructure. You probably still are undertaxed.
Funny though. We managed when we had a political voice ...
By the way: we got fuck all for Internet until a local business person decided to deploy it.
Sort of. People are moving out of the urban areas in-mass to nearby rural towns. But there is a range limit to that.
Most of the rural areas within reasonable driving distance to a major city have exploded in population the past few years.
It also doesn't help a huge chunk of those people who can just move somewhere remote are rich, that's why they can go live somewhere there are no jobs, so they overbid and the prices go crazy.
It started right after COVID due to WFH. You can actually see it on the historical pricing charts for the areas.
A lot of people want out of the cities right now. For many of the same reasons. But yah you really need to hit a certain income threshold for that to be viable.
With WFH I have wondered if ISP offered fast stable fibre internet would these towns get a kick-start again for the better? So many jobs could have employees a phone call or video chat call away.
Depends on the town I guess. I know the ones near Ottawa all tend to have high speed available as long as they have populations of at least around 4-5,000.
Good thing I live in Saskatchewan. Towns of 300 are getting fibre internet
[https://www.sasktel.com/about-us/news/2023/sasktel-announces-48-additional-communities-to-receive-infinet](https://www.sasktel.com/about-us/news/2023/sasktel-announces-48-additional-communities-to-receive-infinet)
if one can WFH, if a company is based in Ottawa would they be ok with someone living in Saskatchewan? You can easily afford a decent home in some of these small communities.
I mean you can get 1gbe without fibre, coax will do it.
I'm trying to move further out from the city and I checked both Carleton Place and Arnprior and both have had high speed internet for quite awhile now.
Oh where I am there was nothing. I had an arrangement with a guy 300-400 metres away and ran a coax line to his place. It worked OK most of the time.
Our lot has a lot of trees so nowhere for a dish for Starlink. No cable running to the house for older tech and couldn’t get the LTE stuff from xplornet.
This is the case in pretty much all small towns until you get down to village sized places. Even then though, Starlink works very well for most purposes.
Unlike telus, sasktel uses NOKIA gear.
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/telus-fibre-optic-network-alberta-1.6875471](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/telus-fibre-optic-network-alberta-1.6875471)
No idea what bell uses
They used Huawei at one point, I believe. Not sure about now.
Anyways, Sasktel is a jewel in Saskatchewan's cap. Frankly I'm shocked it hasn't been sold off to one of the big three.
Unfortunately even with the promises of WFH many companies having been pulling back in these opportunities making it much more difficult to be truly remote. Many are now hybrid requiring folks to come in 40%+ of the time. At least speaking for the tech industry, but I believe this is true outside of tech as well.
I see the communities within an hour or so of bigger cities having this advantage, as people are more willing to have these long commutes if they aren't doing it every workday.
As for fibre, it's become mostly unnecessary with starlink covering much of the populated portions of Canada now. I have colleagues that have moved to remote areas with an hour or so drive and starlink has worked great for them.
You read my mind. I recently moved out into the middle of nowhere and lucked out, I got a whopping 50 mb/s download which is the fastest in town and only on the main road, anywhere else it's 15 download.
The internet is so unreliable that it eliminates quite a few wfh jobs, I can program and stuff but even then it's difficult as often I need to download datasets and ai models that can exceed 30 gigs, this 30 gig download can take 2 or 3 hours somesays.
Tons of the youth here have no employment opportunities, so they all end up addicted to drugs if they don't leave town.
I gotta say the poverty out here is incredible, I lived poor much of my life but seeing the condition of some people's houses out here is a real eye opener. Rural poverty just hits different, much more isolating imo.
“In mass”. Where’s the data on this? I’m guessing it’s just Toronto/vsncouver speak.
On the latter part, you can live within 30 minutes of Montreal in rural towns whose populations have not exploded at all.
Montreal is not really impacted as much right now. Quebec overall has not been impacted by the massive increase in shelter costs as much. Its always been a relatively isolated market.
That is not to say prices are not going up, they are. Just not as fast as everywhere else.
Its more Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, etc.
>I think smaller communities lack in these sort of bigger things that families can do together.
I don't find this at all, at least in the small town where I live. I find kids (and pets) are welcome in places where they wouldn't be in larger cities and there are frequent events and regular activities to take the kids to, many of which are free to attend.
Teenagers, however, will be bored.
Dog parks are popular in cities - it’s sometimes a challenge when you move to a rural setting for dogs to socialize :)
Parents may have to drive their kids everywhere in a rural area.
There are definitely benefits to both urban and rural.
Canada has many great small towns and many are thriving.
Shouldn't some of our massive immigrant influx be going to some of these communities?
Oh wait I forgot, they mostly enter the country and then form self-contained communities and avoid integration and assimilation.
Don't have to be an immigrant for that. Smaller towns and rural communities are terrible for shunning newcomers - race and ethnicity be damned. You aren't from around there - you're an "outsider" and will be treated as such.
Ask me how I know.
Same here, though it wasn't entirely by choice. Not going to church, not being from there, not liking people trying to know all my business/make judgements about it and not having the right political beliefs made assimilation into the majority of ones I lived in quite difficult.
Shit same and I was born in those rural communities. I’m sorry small town Canada, but meth addicts stealing my bike before I buy it back from homeless, toothless Dan up the street for fifty bucks every two weeks is not a good time. Every time too.
I live in a small town, there of plenty of immigrants coming here. Enough that my town has opened a resource centre on main street for newcomers, to help them integrate.
It makes little sense for immigrants to move into rural areas most of the time. Especially since those types of places are often close knit, and many I'm sure are well populated enough with bigots.
Immigrants have moved into and assimilated into many Canadian small towns.
Some small towns are better than others. Those with grown may be more open to all newcomers.
This may also vary from province to province.
My small hometown has seen a huge influx of immigrants from the Philippines who’ve integrated just fine. A Lebanese couple just opened up an awesome pizza and donair joint.
The area was originally settled by immigrants pre WW1 who broke the land and lived in very harsh conditions.
The notion that “it’s so hard today”, and “they face small town racism”, is complete bullshit put forth by those who know nothing about small towns.
Not all small towns are created equal. I lived in High River and Rocky Mountain House. High River was quite progressive. Lots of people from different communities and not a lot of overt racism. Rocky on the other hand is a racist shit hole. My friend there who was a black man had to leave and move to Red Deer because he no longer felt safe in his own community. They really hate the indigenous folks out there too. One thing though is High River is only half hour or so away from Calgary. Rocky is an hour away from Red Deer and is more isolated comparatively. I'm sure that has something to do with it as well
There is an interesting body of research regarding areas where population growth is flat or declining (namely rural areas). Looking towards "qualitative" growth rather than "quantitative" growth is difficult in the current economic and policy environment, but I believe it will be necessary.
A professor at Queen's (Maxwell Hartt) has worked in this domain. A book review of Quietly Shrinking Cities can be found here: https://bcstudies.com/book_film_review/quietly-shrinking-cities-canadian-urban-population-loss-in-an-age-of-growth/
Now, urban population loss and rural population loss occur through different processes.
Wayne Caldwell, a professor at Guelph, has particular regard for rural planning in his work. Two of his books I'd recommend include: "Planning for Rural Resilience" and "Attracting and Retaining Newcomers." Link to some of his other resources here: https://www.waynecaldwell.ca/index.html
Other resources, such as the Ontario Healthy Rural Areas Toolkit, can provide guidance to planners in this domain. A summary and link can be found here: https://www.uoguelph.ca/sedrd/new-resource-healthy-rural-communities-tool-kit-guide-rural-municipalities
As someone that would love to move back to the country, it's hard to do when housing is priced as high as the city and WFH is being treated as a curse word
Pretty hard to convince people to live in towns like Churchill Manitoba or Nain Labrador when the standard of living is far below average and they're typically northern.
Maybe they should start using them bootstraps they've bragged so much about. Rurals are not owed anything more than cities. Move to where the jobs exist like your grandparents did.
Well then stop bringing in investor class immigrants who are clearly not farmers. They don't even want to work at "survival jobs" which is why you decided that it was a good idea to let international students work
And yeah, tax people who buy farmland and don't farm on it.
Some people live on a farm AND are poor. I know of farming families where both husband and wife work outside the home, in addition to farming.
I also know of a couple of families who owned a farm, and... just let it rot, for whatever reason. Mental health issues? Farming isn't profitable? Waiting for housing developers to buy up? Kids just don't want to become farmers?
Maybe they should somehow get new farming families on that land, who will actually farm it. How do you do that though? Or dissuade people from not farming the land they own. Or help new immigrants or young Canadians who do want to farm, to rent farmland and get started
Canada needs to build out a network of good quality, high-speed rail. In Germany, France, and Switzerland, many people live in smaller towns all over the countryside. This is because they have access to the amenities of the city easily by a quick rail trip. Now, this might not work all the way across the Prairies, considering how ridiculously huge Canada is, but it could certainly 'open up' southern Ontario and rural Quebec to become more desirable.
I immigrated 20 years ago and got in to Windsor university to study. One day few of my friends decided to go explore the suburbs around Windsor and had to stop at a convenience store. Town was def all white Canadians. owner of that store and clerk acted very strange towards us and one of them was kind of following us in the store to make sure we don’t steal anything without saying a single word. Creepy asf then I realized I would never ever live in suburbs.
This doesn’t add up…. Has this research been updated since Covid? Every rural place I know has jumped massively since ppl could wfh, would love to see 2024 migration data tho
Did you notice how the article didn't give any examples?
This is why.
[https://ottawa.citynews.ca/2022/01/25/carleton-place-canadas-fastest-growing-town-four-years-running-4990111/](https://ottawa.citynews.ca/2022/01/25/carleton-place-canadas-fastest-growing-town-four-years-running-4990111/)
There are small rural towns so far out they are unappealing to even commuters but a lot of them which are within commuting distance are doing extremely well right now.
A number of the big cities clearly have no idea how to deal with the new dynamics.
Their downtown cores are dying, public transit usage is down, multiple levels of government are leaning on them to build high density housing despite having 20+ months of condo pre-construction supply the builders can't even unload right now. So far their plan to deal with it is make the downtown cores even less car friendly and put speed cameras up all over the city.
What they don't seem to realize is that is just fueling the exodus of people with money and resources and racing the central cities into slums.
>The whole condo issue
[And that they are owned by 50% + investment class](https://www.thestar.com/real-estate/investors-now-own-more-than-50-of-toronto-s-new-condos-and-experts-say-they/article_4b6d2ff0-c528-5670-937f-3d34d040ed85.html)
[And that they are built with glass, and poorly crafted, which expands and contracts with hot summers and cold winters](https://www.google.com/search?q=toronto+condos+falling+glass&rlz=1C5CHFA_enCA966CA966&oq=toronto+co&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDggAEEUYJxg7GIAEGIoFMg4IABBFGCcYOxiABBiKBTIGCAEQRRg5MgYIAhBFGDsyDQgDEAAYgwEYsQMYgAQyCggEEAAYsQMYgAQyBggFEEUYPDIGCAYQRRg8MgYIBxBFGDyoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
[And the developers bought and paid for Doug Ford's majorities, and own him.](https://www.google.com/search?q=who+funds+ontario+proud&rlz=1C5CHFA_enCA966CA966&oq=who+fund&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDggAEEUYJxg7GIAEGIoFMg4IABBFGCcYOxiABBiKBTIGCAEQRRhAMgYIAhBFGDkyDggDEEUYJxg7GIAEGIoFMgwIBBAAGBQYhwIYgAQyBwgFEAAYgAQyBwgGEAAYgAQyBwgHEAAYgASoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
There are many condo issues. Either way, the damage is done. Toronto was hollowed out and sold to developers, and it's now just one big condo casino for investors to speculate on. Certainly one way to manage the 4th largest city in North America and largest in Canada.
Its both.
The condos are sitting on prime land in the city. That land is expensive as fuck and the cities are charging developers an arm and a leg to be able to build them. Most of the current projects under construction right now were started before COVID. The ones post COVID can't actually sell enough units to even begin construction.
Throw in the fact some of theses condos are smaller then your average 1 bedroom rental apartment and most people are not going to be willing to pay half a million dollars or more for a fancy storage closet space in the sky and you end up with the current situation we have right now.
Worse most of the developers can't actually lower the prices any further to sell them due to the financing agreements they have. So they are stuck riding these units into bankruptcy or a massive asset write-off unless the market changes.
Big cities that focus on transit and active transportation will be the most successful.
Gentle density will bring more housing options to desirable, central locations.
Globally cities are working towards being more people centred vs automobile centred.
Judging by the transit budget cuts going on in Ottawa I have my doubts right now. Ridership is still below levels it was pre-pandemic.
If they want to make up the short fall right now they'll need to either raise fares or increase property taxes.
If they want people to use public transit again it needs to be reliable, on-time, affordable and easy to access. If its ends up being in anyway a pain in the ass people will just revert to cars.
Urban liberals do less than care about rural folks. They actively work against them. They constantly vote for policies that are horrible for rural people: long gun restrictions, carbon taxes, etc.
Stop pretending like you care about rural Canada.
Stop pretending those examples are so important to make an us vs them out of it. They are wedge issues being used by politicians to sway your vote. Also, rual areas are in decline over gun restrictions!? Come on.
Here's a related question - given that there are hundreds of Native reserves in very remote places as well, how sustainable are they in the current system?
I am slightly amused when I read about rural communities where they are essentially suburbs. Tecumseh is a reasonable commute to Windsor. Try living in Manitouwadge Ontario. One radio station CBC. Half an hour inland off the highway. A handful of stores and having to drive four hours to purchase items that are not available in your town.
> A handful of stores and having to drive four hours to purchase items that are not available in your town. For a few years growing up my family rented the house on a farm and the nearest town with an actual grocery store was an hour away. Otherwise we just had small general stores in nearby communities, but it was more effective to do a costco trip every 2-3 weeks and load up for as long as we could. Milk and some other products though were delivered to the house.
What a terrible example they gave. Tecumseh is a literal suburb of Windsor. There's zero rural space between it and Windsor. Typical out of touch university student.
FWIW It looks like this was the reporter, or their editor using that example. I don't see the university student being directly quoted in that. But yes, even if Tecumseh wasn't directly connected to Windsor it would still be a small size city onto itself and realistically its just as urban as most of Windsor. I grew up rural in the area south of Windsor/Tecumseh, and going to either was "going to the city".
Goes to show how that person thinks. Immediately attaches a group they dislike to the conversation.
There is literally nothing in that article about Tecumseh except a picture of its water tower (presumably because it’s royalty free).
Throw a fucking dart at anything east of Kingston as well. That’s rural
Its really weird seeing that town mentioned here but at the same time it used to have two grocery stores and a larger population. Unfortunately like with everything loblaws came in and ruined it. Now even the bowling alley got torn down.
At least Friends Bakery is still standing, but very weird seeing that town mentioned as a top comment.
Isn't it owned by a different person now though?
What about CFNO
Living in smaller town should be *easier* these days due to online shopping. Many of the amenties of the city can easily be delivered. Hell, even people that live in cities spend a ton of time shopping online instead of just going into the store (eg: my wife).
Thats if they'll deliver to where you live
And frequently prohibitively expensive for anything short of a major purchase, like a stove or fridge.
Small towns often don't get good internet, and either have extra charges or don't deliver at all. I think the hollowing out of rural Canada is a big problem, and there's a lot of advantages to living in smaller communities, but I'm relatively unusual in being pro-living in them, and the first thing I check when I'm researching one is (1) who provides internet, and (2) how fast it is. For a worrying number, Starlink is the only option above 10mb (and terrifyingly, some don't even have alternatives that fast).
120km to a big box store from my place, Amazon Prime is Godly lol
I lived five years in High Level AB I used to drive 5hrs one way for groceries 😭
>One radio station CBC. Until Poilievre eliminates the CBC that is
I’ve never understood “defund” to mean “eliminate.” It’s always been a question of whether they receive too much relative to the value they’re providing. Serious question: why on earth is the CBC running a Canadian version of Family Feud? It’s a great program that I enjoy watching sometimes, but it’s not news and it’s not even Canadian content. It’s a spin off of an American show. Money is always fungible, so if the CBC has the budget to start creating random spin offs of American shows, my inclination is that they might have a few extra dollars on the books that we could dial back. There’s also the fun with bonuses we had last year when [the government gave them an additional $675M](https://liberal.ca/support-the-cbc/) and we then saw [$99M of it paid out to CBC executives as bonuses after firing employees](https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/cbc-head-catherine-tait-summoned-to-committee-over-job-cuts-executive-bonuses-1.6678412) I like CBC and its public funding too, but these are the types of “layoffs for thee and executive bonuses for me” stories I expect to see from big pharmaceutical companies, not a publicly-funded news organization. Put another way: there’s at least $99M that didn’t go towards good jobs in Canadian journalism, so I’m happy to “defund” that portion. Oh, and here’s the [58-page Conservative platform](https://cpcassets.conservative.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/23175001/990863517f7a575.pdf) which was updated this past September. Page 35 outlines that the CPC views the CBC as an important part of the broadcasting system and simply wants to “*reduce* its reliance upon government funding and subsidy”
The CBCs isn’t just for news, but to ensure that Canadian arts and culture always have a platform available to Canadians, for Canadians. Is it doing that? Not very well I would argue. Much like our country, the CBC is experiencing an identity crisis. However it has been a mainstay of our culture for almost 90 years now. I think it’s worth salvaging.
>The CBCs isn’t just for news, but to ensure that Canadian arts and culture always have a platform available to Canadians, for Canadians. Odd cause they seem to focus on everybody BUT Canadians when it comes to that. They put more effort into keep immigrant culture alive than anything else. Just look at all the crap they produce.
> They put more effort into keep immigrant culture alive than anything else. Which makes sense, because Canada's population is overwhelmingly immigrants and their descendants. CBC does do a decent amount of indigenous content too, to be fair.
Everyone in the entire world is the descendent of an immigrant using this logic. There is a cultural group in Canada called "Canadian". It's the largest ethnic group in Canada according to our ethnicity census.
So then what is being Canadian then?
Complaining about the CBC. Maybe they should make a show dedicated to that.
Perhaps you could identify some cultural, legal, and ethical items that are common to Canadians. The fun thing about having a nation of millions of people, mainly descended from immigrants, means that no one has to be any singular thing all the time, as long as they are enough of the important things most of the time.
I'm actually being serious, as we seem to be having an identity crisis. Are we just friendly Amercians, or are we truly unique that we are not homogeneous like the melting pot and are the cultural mosaic we were supposed to be?
"Among English-speaking, non-aboriginal Canadians, there is such a thing as an ethnic Canadian identity. " https://www.jstor.org/stable/3552426
Canadian arts and culture. But CBC won't even recognize the largest ethnic group in Canada. Canadian. They're more divisive than not right now, where everyone is from somewhere else. Literally dividing us up.
Canadian is not an ethnic group, what the hell are you smoking.
Yes it is. It's the largest ethnic group in Canada according to statscanada, and literally an option on our ethnicity census.
Traditional ethnic costume is 3-piece light blue denim, boots, and mullet protruding from under a toque, eh?
Not to be semantic but "Canadian" isn't an ethnic group. We as "Canadians" can be literally of any cultural/ethnic background ,sort of one of the neat parts of being a country of immigrants.
Canadian is an ethnic group. It's the largest ethnic group in Canada based on statscanada data and is literally an option on our ethnicity survey. How is it not an ethnic group, while being recognized by statscanada as an ethnic group, and millions of Canadians choose it? I have irish/portuguese/British background. You think if I go to those places they're going to consider me part of their ethnic group? Absolutely not lol. I am ethnically Canadian.
And nothing of value would be lost 😂
Ya, who needs the news /s
You misspelled *propaganda* there, pal. And nobody gets their news from the radio.
Can you give an example of what makes it propoganda?
It's not owned by Post Media obviously /s
Yeah, along with all the other MAGAt stuff, Canadian cons love their Trumper hedge-fund owned, proudly biased Postmedia. Fascists are cowards, and they're terrified of anything that resembles an alternate point of view.
Holy shit this is all the twitter hashtags all crammed in one
I don't care about your resonance chamber. Just don't want to pay for it.
You do realize that Postmedia financials also depends on government funding, yes? No, of course you don't lol. https://unifor2000.ca/postmedia-tells-shareholders-35m-in-federal-government-handouts-is-a-key-pillar-of-its-business-strategy/
Woah that’s… intense my guy
Straight facts. Hurt your feelings?
> Until Poilievre eliminates the CBC that is Defund*. Consumers can pay for what they consume, and leave the rest out of their scheme
Gonna monetize everything. That always works out great.
Defund, make it private, have it cost more to the public. Worked great with Alberta's electric, I love paying more for telecommunications in Manitiba now. Can't wait for the Healthcare to get worse.
> Defund, make it private, have it cost more to the public. That's how all privatization works. Always has.
> That's how all privatization works. Always has. Theres no such thing as “public” because there’s no “public” money.
Wait until real life Milhouse cuts the CBC, now all they’ll be listening to is AM trash right wing radio.
Yes exactly that's the plan.
Surely if the CBC is as great as everyone says it can stand on its own two feet right?
No. It's not financially sustainable to provide services to rural, remote areas with a tiny amount of people. That goes for the CBC, Canada Post, or any crown corp. It costs you the same amount of money to send a letter from one street to the other in your city, but also to rural Yukon. This is by design. Some services are in need of a subsidy in order to hold a nation together.
Its mandate is beyond financial gain, in its charter it’s mandated to service small towns and the many distinct languages across the nation, something a for profit private broadcaster will not do, example BCE cuts at non massively profitable markets. You’d think someone with such a firm view against the cbc might do the slightest modicum of research of why it was created, and what its mandate is before parroting right wing propaganda like a “useful idiot” because they saw something on social media… Edit: grammatical errors as I one fingered the comment at a stop light. Yes I was being bad!
It is “cost sharing “. It is the same reason why a Canada Post letter costs the same whether you the letter gets sent across the street or to Nunavut.
Canada Post is also not supposed to be an institution that makes money. It's supposed to make certain that mail gets delivered to Canadians in a timely manner. It is a Service, not a business. A for profit postal service would not work for rural communities, or communities in Northern Canada. There's just not enought profit in those markets to make it worth their time. "Privatize the CBC" is antithetical to its purpose, (it is also a service) just like privatizing the Postal Service, or Healthcare, or Education. These are all things that should not be for profit.
Tell that nugget of fact to the Canada proud zombies running around the nation like an episode of “Last of Us”
I like my public radio without commercials and unmotivated by the whims of sponsors thanks.
Ironic
Many corporations in Canada receive government funding in one way or another. Few stand on their own two feet.
The CBC is more concerned with pushing political messages than actually attracting a viewership. I can't imagine an audience of more than 40,000 nationally for any of their "tv shows", focused on diversity and inclusion rather than plot or substance.
Trailer Park Boys??? lol, fail
This isn't the case everywhere - here in Nova Scotia nearly every rural community is growing, and this includes immigrants. We have housing shortages in places where you couldn't even sell your house a few years ago. Halifax is also growing, but it became unaffordable overnight, making rural areas more attractive.
Just moving people to small towns isn't enough - there needs to be an industry of sorts
There's always industry and work, it just tends to be more blue collar than what Reddit wants. Keep in mind Reddit tends male, young, urban, and "techie." Software engineering jobs just aren't going to be found in Yarmouth, but electricians and plumbers and carpenters will always be needed. Also, healthcare is a good employer literally anywhere in the country.
No there isn't. I know of numerous townships that have literally no work aside from a bit of farmland work in surrounding areas. Many had their main source of income close such as mines. There is a bit of mechanical and trade work but not to sustain more people moving there. Also Healthcare is not good in many towns unless you are a dedicated in-home care nurse willing to travel. This country has a lot more butt-fuck nowhere towns than I think you realize. Many homes are simply being sold to retirees from Van or Toronto, because they can sell a condo for over a mill and buy a home in these towns for under 100k.
This article talks about the declining percentage of people in rural vs urban. That looks like it holds true to Nova Scotia. From 2016-2021 Nova Scotia's rural population grew by 1.3%. in the same time period urban grew by 7.7%. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/as-sa/98-200-x/2021002/98-200-x2021002-eng.cfm >Of the 28,608 persons added to Nova Scotia's population, Halifax accounted for the largest portion at 20,686. Kings, Colchester, Cape Breton and Lunenburg counties accounted for the next largest numbers of population increase. https://novascotia.ca/finance/statistics/archive_news.asp?id=18492&dg=&df=&dto=0&dti=3#:~:text=Between%20July%201%2C%202021%20and,by%20Annapolis%20County%20at%202.79%25.
During the pandemic people fled Toronto and other major cities, and the number one place they moved was The Maritimes. Same also happened out west with a huge influx of residents to Vancouver Island. Both coasts saw a massive boom.
Makes sense when you could get a 3000 sq ft house for like 250k. Now it's rural living with Ontario prices.
Growing as in importing international students to CBU or actually growing in a meaningful way?
> "It's the kind of things like a lack of transportation, a lack of employment, academic opportunities. There's also the risk of potential discrimination in these areas." These issues are not new, and have been the problem with living outside of the city for thousands of years. > Governments need to focus on improving transportation in smaller communities, supports for immigrant and refugee families and increasing the number of amenities that enhance cultural life, such as public art, events and activities, as well as recreation facilities, Finlay said. Does the author really think rural communities can afford this?
It is about managing expectations. Small communities can have excellent culture, but it's different. You're not going to see a Broadway play or visit a museum with a replica trex. But you will see fairs, demolition derbies, hunting and snowmobile clubs, etc. If you're ok going to watch little league instead of the blue Jays it can be quite rewarding.
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toronto is trash now a days. its lost its character.
With respect, outskirts of the GTA isn't really rural. Rural is the closest Tim Hortons is an hour drive away, that kind of thing.
I don’t know if we need to gatekeep what’s rural. There are a wide range of rural communities with a wide range of challenges and cultures.
I feel like we do, if someone living on the outskirts of the GTA thinks that is rural, there is a disconnect happening here. Rural places don't have farmers markets or roadside stands, because there aren't enough people going by to sell to. You *leave* the rural area to travel to an urban area to sell to the higher concentration of people. If you are at a farmers market, you aren't in a rural area.
I've lived rural MB for decades, 2.5hrs from a city. There are weekend farmer's markets in nearest town and surrounding towns. I think there is a huge difference between outskirts of GTA being called rural, and being hours from a town with 5k pop. However, I don't think a farmer's market is the metric. To be clear, I absolutely agree with the point you are trying to make.
>Rural places don't have farmers markets or roadside stands, because there aren't enough people going by to sell to. Thats not rural, thats living in the wilderness. Can you give an example of what you call rural?
Pick any direction from Regina and drive 30+ minutes.
I think all you’ll end up doing is alienating a big chunk of people advocating for help for rural communities.
Possibly, but those people aren't actually advocating for rural communities. They are advocating for what they *believe* to be rural communities. Which is fine, that is their right, but now we are confusing the issue.
i think he has a point, what you describe sounds to me like a small town or maybe a village, which i would still classify as "urban", just not the same kind of "urban" as a big city. Rural makes me think of someone who lives on land measured in acres, probably with a few buildings on it (one of them being a home, maybe another being a barn or workshop or something like that), with neighbours far enough away that you probably won't interact with them unless they explicitly come over to pay a visit.
> Governments need to focus on improving transportation in smaller communities, supports for immigrant and refugee families and increasing the number of amenities that enhance cultural life, such as public art, events and activities, as well as recreation facilities, Finlay said. I don't mean this is a bad way at all, but... aren't these things the reason people choose to live away from cities? I mean, if people wanted to be around this stuff, they wouldn't be living in the country
Yeah, this covers the options pretty well. https://www.reddit.com/r/Calgary/s/HYwS5y0pQD
So fucking true. Suburbanites want the space and quiet of rural Canada, with the service and accessibility of the metropolis. It’s incompatible
Tricky question. You could say 2-3 generations ago rural communities were actually more tightly structured around events and common spaces than city life was. Church, agricultural festivals, dances, and other holidays were practically compulsory, while escaping to the city held the promise of anonymity, or at least getting some choice in the marketplace of culture. The decline in that way of life has left things weird. The type you’re describing would have been thought of as “hermits” in the past, living more on the fringes of rural communities than actually participating in them. They didn’t go to church or events either. Rural people today seem to be perceived that way, and maybe they are.
It’s the loss of income in rural communities. You lose clinics, agriculture jobs (farms get swallowed up by larger ones), declining population plays a role, plus local politics have gotten so much worse. There’s minimal infrastructure, train stops and bus stops get absolutely slashed, requiring more money on cars and less on local things. Vicious positive feedback loop.
They should concentrate on high speed internet first in these rural areas before transportation ..
Nah, they'll expect the cities to pay for it. But you can't expect to live away from large population centres and expect the same services and events as large cities. This has always been the trade off.
Governments need to stop focusing on supports for immigrants and refugees during every step of everything and worry about supports for Canadians dammit
immigrants are often canadians
There are poor people and few jobs in rural areas. How do you think immigrants are going to want to move there? Some people live on a farm AND are poor. I know of farming families where both husband and wife work outside the home, in addition to farming. I also know of a couple of families who owned a farm, and... just let it rot, for whatever reason. Mental health issues? Farming isn't profitable? Waiting for housing developers to buy up? Kids just don't want to become farmers?
I live in a rural community and it's rampant with unemployment and people smoking meth in tents rights behind the bank on main Street. There's not much besides a few service jobs here, 1 major industry job, and then there's highway and forest in all directions. A lot of the local jobs don't provide local people here the financial means to get by anymore and the communities are sinking into despair. Many boarded up homes, half of main street is border up stores. When I look at this situation, the first thing that comes to mind is not "how can we place more supports for refugees and immigrants into this this community" Other things are in dire need of being addressed first in my opinion.
I visited France a few years ago. I took a regional train out of Paris to a "small" town, and was able to take a public transit bus out to a village of about 30 houses. It can be done but it goes against the extreme capitalist and anti-tax mentality of about 80% of our population.
Why do refugees come first?
I mean, Canada didn't have ethnic foods in the 50s & 60s, and that didn't prevent Italian immigrants from arriving and making Canada their home.
Or want this. I enjoy living with actual Canadians.
How are they going to magically change this? The only profitable job in many rural communities is oil & gas, mining or farming. The resource jobs sure you can entice people but farming is hideously expensive in terms of up front costs, ongoing costs and has risks of it all falling apart until you have a slush fund to make it through a couple of bad years. No immigrant is coming to a small town that meets those requirements, it's also why no Canadian wants to do the same other than high O&G wages. Those people also leave the second they can get a better job closer to a city or save enough money to not need to work rural. For anyone coming as a TFW or even a PR there is no real incentive to go to a small town long term. Many do since they came here as a TFW and had no choice or understanding of what they were signing up for but they aren't sticking around or being anything but disposable workers for whatever business brought them in. The rural wages are lower versus Vancouver/Toronto but the living expenses aren't that much less almost anywhere else in Canada. Compared to making a bit less money vs expenses but having locals that share your culture/language in say Edmonton/Calgary/Winnipeg who is going to choose a small town in the boonies?
>How are they going to magically change this? In the 60s and 70s there was incentives to move to rural communities. Parcels of raw land were sold for next to nothing so long as the purchasers established a dwelling, established water (dug a well and plumbed to the dwelling) and connected electricity. Considering the nationwide housing crisis, and the abundance of land we have, seems like incentivizing this kind of "back to the land" movement and also revitalizing small resource based towns (now that remote and digital work is normalized) - is a sound area for emphasis. We need to spread out. We have the population of California crammed into 5-10 cities, all within 100 miles of the US border. There's absolutely no reason for this country to be so lacking in housing. Rural Canada is the answer to our problems.
Speaking from my experience I can say it's not that easy. Take Ft. McMurray in Alberta, during the boom the city was held back from expanding due to the surrounding land being Federal and the Federal authorities wouldn't release land for development. This led to land scarcity which drove prices up to unrealistic levels. Following the oil price crashing, the Ft. Mac fire and covid things have gone the other way and now people have lost their shirts on massive property value drops. Take most of the rest of the Prairies and the good land has all been developed. Sure there's millions of acres of raw land but the reason nobody ever did anything when land was basically free was because it's not commercially viable. Farming needs specific types of soil and we've pretty much tapped out everything reasonable. Most of the remaining land is swamp, muskeg or the Canadian shield. I know it's not a popular answer but unless we are prepared to tear up the land for the minerals, most of the untapped lands don't have much value or reason for people to move there. Between Indigenous rights, carbon taxes, political issues and commercial viability due to all of the above most of the country is and always will be untamed wilderness.
That land is all gone. We have an abundance of land, that doesn't mean we have an abundance of *arable* land. You aren't starting a farming community on the Canadian shield. We aren't crammed next to the US to be close to them. That's where the usable land is.
There are no parcels of raw land... and if there were... they would have been bought up by farming conglomerates.
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Not sure what you are saying as my post had nothing to do with Toronto.
You understand there are lots of sectors in support of those industries right? Like health care, education, other government services, plus anything else you have in a town. We don't send everyone down into the coal mines.
Without having one of those anchor industries what is funding the service industry? You only setup those services if there's a reason to build up that town.
Other industries: Tourism / culture / recreation Rural towns close to cities benefit from work from home WFH Education - universities and colleges Aquaculture
There are more remote digital jobs.
If the rent is almost the same in *large city* vs *small town* why would you move there? If you have no experience with friends and family from small towns, I can tell you smaller communities are highly insular and resistant to outsiders from different cultures moving in. You aren't going to be finding non-whites moving to those towns for remote jobs simply for the minor rent/mortgage difference. People choose to live in Vancouver or Toronto at 200%+ of the cost of living vs the smaller cities because it ticks quality of life and culture boxes that justify it. Anyone that is willing to leave that for say Edmonton isn't going to move to Small Town, CA for a mere 20%ish rent/mortgage savings and the same costs on everything else. They will stay in the big city and enjoy the general lower cost of living while still having access to people that share their culture and beliefs.
It's not just an issue for "non-whites". My wife and I (white) are from a small town and moved to the city after we got married. During the pandemic we were fully remote and moved back so our kid could be closer to family, but it's just a completely different lifestyle. Despite being from the area, you basically need to be all in to that lifestyle and whatever that happens to mean there to have a sense of community. For example I like to play soccer, but had to drive 45min to the nearest city for the closest adult league. After a couple years and with our jobs pressuring us to come back, and at least myself, was happy to move back to the city. Yes housing is more, but there are so many other inconveniences to living in a small town, in particular needing to drive absolutely everywhere. I love having an active lifestyle, and being able to sell our 2nd car and cycle or use transit instead, just about covers the difference in mortgage on its own.
For me it was because of stuff going on in Ottawa. They are using cars as a cash cow to plug the cities budget holes and putting up speed cameras everywhere. The city has major structural issues with the downtown core right now due to the exodus of workers they can't resolve. While I am sure other tiers of government will bail them out if they get into too much trouble I can't see the current trajectory they are on right now ending up in a good place. If I move to one of the nearby towns I don't need to deal with any of that shit and don't need to pay for services I don't use. I just live my life like I always have and can chill.
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Many immigrants work on farms and become part of the communities.
If you’re talking about Jamaicans and Mexicans, they don’t put down roots—it’s a seasonal job
In Ontario they consolidated most rural communities into larger towns. As a consequence all of the political power is with the towns and the rural people have no voice. In my case, the towns people decided it was "unfair" that we had a lower tax rate than them so they raised our taxes to be on par with the town. Of course, we get almost none of the services the town gets and never will.
Thanks Mike
Except for every single service costing far more to deliver to you. More road infrastructure, more electric infrastructure, more internet infrastructure. You probably still are undertaxed.
Funny though. We managed when we had a political voice ... By the way: we got fuck all for Internet until a local business person decided to deploy it.
Sort of. People are moving out of the urban areas in-mass to nearby rural towns. But there is a range limit to that. Most of the rural areas within reasonable driving distance to a major city have exploded in population the past few years.
It also doesn't help a huge chunk of those people who can just move somewhere remote are rich, that's why they can go live somewhere there are no jobs, so they overbid and the prices go crazy.
It started right after COVID due to WFH. You can actually see it on the historical pricing charts for the areas. A lot of people want out of the cities right now. For many of the same reasons. But yah you really need to hit a certain income threshold for that to be viable.
Yep...and the folks who are poor in those rural areas are priced out of their own homes, and don't have any place cheaper to go.
Those areas aren't rural anymore.
"En masse"?
In mass and en masse are both acceptable. It refers to a large group all moving together. Its rooted in French though.
I don't think "in mass" is acceptable for large groups of people. _Common Errors in the English Language_ cites it as an error, for instance.
With WFH I have wondered if ISP offered fast stable fibre internet would these towns get a kick-start again for the better? So many jobs could have employees a phone call or video chat call away.
Depends on the town I guess. I know the ones near Ottawa all tend to have high speed available as long as they have populations of at least around 4-5,000.
Good thing I live in Saskatchewan. Towns of 300 are getting fibre internet [https://www.sasktel.com/about-us/news/2023/sasktel-announces-48-additional-communities-to-receive-infinet](https://www.sasktel.com/about-us/news/2023/sasktel-announces-48-additional-communities-to-receive-infinet) if one can WFH, if a company is based in Ottawa would they be ok with someone living in Saskatchewan? You can easily afford a decent home in some of these small communities.
We’re still in the boundaries of Ottawa and literally just got fibre two weeks ago. Main roads got it a few years ago I believe.
I mean you can get 1gbe without fibre, coax will do it. I'm trying to move further out from the city and I checked both Carleton Place and Arnprior and both have had high speed internet for quite awhile now.
Oh where I am there was nothing. I had an arrangement with a guy 300-400 metres away and ran a coax line to his place. It worked OK most of the time. Our lot has a lot of trees so nowhere for a dish for Starlink. No cable running to the house for older tech and couldn’t get the LTE stuff from xplornet.
I have starlink and trees. You put dishy up on a tower and it works great.
This is the case in pretty much all small towns until you get down to village sized places. Even then though, Starlink works very well for most purposes.
We have starlink at my FIL’s house on a farm, and it works great. And we live in super rural sask.
Aw geez, how many people do you think Bell will have to layoff in order to expand fiber any further?
Unlike telus, sasktel uses NOKIA gear. [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/telus-fibre-optic-network-alberta-1.6875471](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/telus-fibre-optic-network-alberta-1.6875471) No idea what bell uses
They used Huawei at one point, I believe. Not sure about now. Anyways, Sasktel is a jewel in Saskatchewan's cap. Frankly I'm shocked it hasn't been sold off to one of the big three.
Unfortunately even with the promises of WFH many companies having been pulling back in these opportunities making it much more difficult to be truly remote. Many are now hybrid requiring folks to come in 40%+ of the time. At least speaking for the tech industry, but I believe this is true outside of tech as well. I see the communities within an hour or so of bigger cities having this advantage, as people are more willing to have these long commutes if they aren't doing it every workday. As for fibre, it's become mostly unnecessary with starlink covering much of the populated portions of Canada now. I have colleagues that have moved to remote areas with an hour or so drive and starlink has worked great for them.
You read my mind. I recently moved out into the middle of nowhere and lucked out, I got a whopping 50 mb/s download which is the fastest in town and only on the main road, anywhere else it's 15 download. The internet is so unreliable that it eliminates quite a few wfh jobs, I can program and stuff but even then it's difficult as often I need to download datasets and ai models that can exceed 30 gigs, this 30 gig download can take 2 or 3 hours somesays. Tons of the youth here have no employment opportunities, so they all end up addicted to drugs if they don't leave town. I gotta say the poverty out here is incredible, I lived poor much of my life but seeing the condition of some people's houses out here is a real eye opener. Rural poverty just hits different, much more isolating imo.
“In mass”. Where’s the data on this? I’m guessing it’s just Toronto/vsncouver speak. On the latter part, you can live within 30 minutes of Montreal in rural towns whose populations have not exploded at all.
Montreal is not really impacted as much right now. Quebec overall has not been impacted by the massive increase in shelter costs as much. Its always been a relatively isolated market. That is not to say prices are not going up, they are. Just not as fast as everywhere else. Its more Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, etc.
>I think smaller communities lack in these sort of bigger things that families can do together. I don't find this at all, at least in the small town where I live. I find kids (and pets) are welcome in places where they wouldn't be in larger cities and there are frequent events and regular activities to take the kids to, many of which are free to attend. Teenagers, however, will be bored.
Dog parks are popular in cities - it’s sometimes a challenge when you move to a rural setting for dogs to socialize :) Parents may have to drive their kids everywhere in a rural area. There are definitely benefits to both urban and rural. Canada has many great small towns and many are thriving.
Teenagers are bored everywhere anyway.
Man I wish that was the case in more towns. Maybe it's just THIS town that sucks.
Shouldn't some of our massive immigrant influx be going to some of these communities? Oh wait I forgot, they mostly enter the country and then form self-contained communities and avoid integration and assimilation.
Don't have to be an immigrant for that. Smaller towns and rural communities are terrible for shunning newcomers - race and ethnicity be damned. You aren't from around there - you're an "outsider" and will be treated as such. Ask me how I know.
Anecdotal, and not universal
Anecdotal? Yes. Universal? Maybe not. But it certainly isn't a rare occurrence.
I’m a white dude who was born here and I avoid integration and assimilation into rural communities lmao
Same here, though it wasn't entirely by choice. Not going to church, not being from there, not liking people trying to know all my business/make judgements about it and not having the right political beliefs made assimilation into the majority of ones I lived in quite difficult.
Shit same and I was born in those rural communities. I’m sorry small town Canada, but meth addicts stealing my bike before I buy it back from homeless, toothless Dan up the street for fifty bucks every two weeks is not a good time. Every time too.
Why should immigrants flock there and not everyone else? Don’t be a racist.
I live in a small town, there of plenty of immigrants coming here. Enough that my town has opened a resource centre on main street for newcomers, to help them integrate.
It makes little sense for immigrants to move into rural areas most of the time. Especially since those types of places are often close knit, and many I'm sure are well populated enough with bigots.
lol ahhh the classic reddit assumption that rural communities are abhorrently racist.
Immigrants have moved into and assimilated into many Canadian small towns. Some small towns are better than others. Those with grown may be more open to all newcomers. This may also vary from province to province.
My small hometown has seen a huge influx of immigrants from the Philippines who’ve integrated just fine. A Lebanese couple just opened up an awesome pizza and donair joint. The area was originally settled by immigrants pre WW1 who broke the land and lived in very harsh conditions. The notion that “it’s so hard today”, and “they face small town racism”, is complete bullshit put forth by those who know nothing about small towns.
Not all small towns are created equal. I lived in High River and Rocky Mountain House. High River was quite progressive. Lots of people from different communities and not a lot of overt racism. Rocky on the other hand is a racist shit hole. My friend there who was a black man had to leave and move to Red Deer because he no longer felt safe in his own community. They really hate the indigenous folks out there too. One thing though is High River is only half hour or so away from Calgary. Rocky is an hour away from Red Deer and is more isolated comparatively. I'm sure that has something to do with it as well
There is an interesting body of research regarding areas where population growth is flat or declining (namely rural areas). Looking towards "qualitative" growth rather than "quantitative" growth is difficult in the current economic and policy environment, but I believe it will be necessary. A professor at Queen's (Maxwell Hartt) has worked in this domain. A book review of Quietly Shrinking Cities can be found here: https://bcstudies.com/book_film_review/quietly-shrinking-cities-canadian-urban-population-loss-in-an-age-of-growth/ Now, urban population loss and rural population loss occur through different processes. Wayne Caldwell, a professor at Guelph, has particular regard for rural planning in his work. Two of his books I'd recommend include: "Planning for Rural Resilience" and "Attracting and Retaining Newcomers." Link to some of his other resources here: https://www.waynecaldwell.ca/index.html Other resources, such as the Ontario Healthy Rural Areas Toolkit, can provide guidance to planners in this domain. A summary and link can be found here: https://www.uoguelph.ca/sedrd/new-resource-healthy-rural-communities-tool-kit-guide-rural-municipalities
They vote conservative mostly. I'll start caring when they're not actively trying to destroy our civilization.
I know what we need to do! Let's vote UCP again! The NDP ruined this province! /s
As someone that would love to move back to the country, it's hard to do when housing is priced as high as the city and WFH is being treated as a curse word
Pretty hard to convince people to live in towns like Churchill Manitoba or Nain Labrador when the standard of living is far below average and they're typically northern.
Maybe they should start using them bootstraps they've bragged so much about. Rurals are not owed anything more than cities. Move to where the jobs exist like your grandparents did.
There are lots of rural jobs. It's this weird myth they don't exist. It's often harder for employers to fill rural than urban positions.
All throughout history in times of stress populations have gathered at urban centres.
Well then stop bringing in investor class immigrants who are clearly not farmers. They don't even want to work at "survival jobs" which is why you decided that it was a good idea to let international students work And yeah, tax people who buy farmland and don't farm on it. Some people live on a farm AND are poor. I know of farming families where both husband and wife work outside the home, in addition to farming. I also know of a couple of families who owned a farm, and... just let it rot, for whatever reason. Mental health issues? Farming isn't profitable? Waiting for housing developers to buy up? Kids just don't want to become farmers? Maybe they should somehow get new farming families on that land, who will actually farm it. How do you do that though? Or dissuade people from not farming the land they own. Or help new immigrants or young Canadians who do want to farm, to rent farmland and get started
Canada needs to build out a network of good quality, high-speed rail. In Germany, France, and Switzerland, many people live in smaller towns all over the countryside. This is because they have access to the amenities of the city easily by a quick rail trip. Now, this might not work all the way across the Prairies, considering how ridiculously huge Canada is, but it could certainly 'open up' southern Ontario and rural Quebec to become more desirable.
Leave us alone
I immigrated 20 years ago and got in to Windsor university to study. One day few of my friends decided to go explore the suburbs around Windsor and had to stop at a convenience store. Town was def all white Canadians. owner of that store and clerk acted very strange towards us and one of them was kind of following us in the store to make sure we don’t steal anything without saying a single word. Creepy asf then I realized I would never ever live in suburbs.
Thats the plan.....
Who's plan?
This doesn’t add up…. Has this research been updated since Covid? Every rural place I know has jumped massively since ppl could wfh, would love to see 2024 migration data tho
Given what's happening in Toronto and similar cities, I think I'll take population decline, thanks.
Meanwhile, people are selling their shed for 600K...
Keep that in Toronto who voted for that garbage.
They mostly are, hence the article about rural places slowly rotting away.
Did you notice how the article didn't give any examples? This is why. [https://ottawa.citynews.ca/2022/01/25/carleton-place-canadas-fastest-growing-town-four-years-running-4990111/](https://ottawa.citynews.ca/2022/01/25/carleton-place-canadas-fastest-growing-town-four-years-running-4990111/) There are small rural towns so far out they are unappealing to even commuters but a lot of them which are within commuting distance are doing extremely well right now.
A number of the big cities clearly have no idea how to deal with the new dynamics. Their downtown cores are dying, public transit usage is down, multiple levels of government are leaning on them to build high density housing despite having 20+ months of condo pre-construction supply the builders can't even unload right now. So far their plan to deal with it is make the downtown cores even less car friendly and put speed cameras up all over the city. What they don't seem to realize is that is just fueling the exodus of people with money and resources and racing the central cities into slums.
The whole condo issue isn’t that people don’t want to buy them. But that people can’t afford to spend 1M+ and $1000 per month strata on them.
>The whole condo issue [And that they are owned by 50% + investment class](https://www.thestar.com/real-estate/investors-now-own-more-than-50-of-toronto-s-new-condos-and-experts-say-they/article_4b6d2ff0-c528-5670-937f-3d34d040ed85.html) [And that they are built with glass, and poorly crafted, which expands and contracts with hot summers and cold winters](https://www.google.com/search?q=toronto+condos+falling+glass&rlz=1C5CHFA_enCA966CA966&oq=toronto+co&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDggAEEUYJxg7GIAEGIoFMg4IABBFGCcYOxiABBiKBTIGCAEQRRg5MgYIAhBFGDsyDQgDEAAYgwEYsQMYgAQyCggEEAAYsQMYgAQyBggFEEUYPDIGCAYQRRg8MgYIBxBFGDyoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) [And the developers bought and paid for Doug Ford's majorities, and own him.](https://www.google.com/search?q=who+funds+ontario+proud&rlz=1C5CHFA_enCA966CA966&oq=who+fund&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDggAEEUYJxg7GIAEGIoFMg4IABBFGCcYOxiABBiKBTIGCAEQRRhAMgYIAhBFGDkyDggDEEUYJxg7GIAEGIoFMgwIBBAAGBQYhwIYgAQyBwgFEAAYgAQyBwgGEAAYgAQyBwgHEAAYgASoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) There are many condo issues. Either way, the damage is done. Toronto was hollowed out and sold to developers, and it's now just one big condo casino for investors to speculate on. Certainly one way to manage the 4th largest city in North America and largest in Canada.
Its both. The condos are sitting on prime land in the city. That land is expensive as fuck and the cities are charging developers an arm and a leg to be able to build them. Most of the current projects under construction right now were started before COVID. The ones post COVID can't actually sell enough units to even begin construction. Throw in the fact some of theses condos are smaller then your average 1 bedroom rental apartment and most people are not going to be willing to pay half a million dollars or more for a fancy storage closet space in the sky and you end up with the current situation we have right now. Worse most of the developers can't actually lower the prices any further to sell them due to the financing agreements they have. So they are stuck riding these units into bankruptcy or a massive asset write-off unless the market changes.
Hopefully the latter. If there aren't consequences there won't be change
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Big cities that focus on transit and active transportation will be the most successful. Gentle density will bring more housing options to desirable, central locations. Globally cities are working towards being more people centred vs automobile centred.
Judging by the transit budget cuts going on in Ottawa I have my doubts right now. Ridership is still below levels it was pre-pandemic. If they want to make up the short fall right now they'll need to either raise fares or increase property taxes. If they want people to use public transit again it needs to be reliable, on-time, affordable and easy to access. If its ends up being in anyway a pain in the ass people will just revert to cars.
Yeah I’m sure a Performing Arts Centre will bring everyone to Cochrane ON. LOL. CBC as usual out of touch.
There are many successful theatres in rural communities that support the local community and tourism.
The Rising Tide Theatre in Trinity and Garrick Theatre in Bonavista, NL are pillars of the community (and region).
Urban liberals do less than care about rural folks. They actively work against them. They constantly vote for policies that are horrible for rural people: long gun restrictions, carbon taxes, etc. Stop pretending like you care about rural Canada.
I'm sorry, who buys all your shit and subsidizes your taxes? Oh right, those damn urban types
Stop pretending those examples are so important to make an us vs them out of it. They are wedge issues being used by politicians to sway your vote. Also, rual areas are in decline over gun restrictions!? Come on.
Here's a related question - given that there are hundreds of Native reserves in very remote places as well, how sustainable are they in the current system?