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Canada's big cities - Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver - face significant challenges: immigrant settlement, affordable housing, spatial concentration of poverty, water and wastewater management and public transit delivery. Canada's smaller communities face different challenges such as retention of young, qualified workers who are often forced to leave their communities to seek employment opportunities elsewhere in Canada.
Since both rural and urban communities are vital to the economic, social, environmental and cultural viability of the country, we must address the very pressing needs of our large cities as well as those of smaller communities.
No one order of Government has the means to address these challenges alone. Since the policies and programs of the Government of Canada have impact in cities and communities, we need to work together with other orders of government, the private sector, national and civil society to ensure that our efforts are complementary, responsive to local needs and consistent with shared objectives.
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