THINKING ABOUT RURAL CANADA

November 28, 2001 to May 7, 2002

Presentations

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

By: Professor Tony Fuller, University of Guelph

In thinking about rural Canada all manner of images come to mind: small friendly towns, abundant farmland, coastal communities and cherished landscapes of rocks, rivers, trees and lakes. Although bucolic views may be uppermost in most people's minds, positive images of "rural" are rarely the direct focus in policy discussions. From a policy perspective, rural Canada has usually been seen as a "have-not" environment, where many problems of deprivation and want are expressed. This reflects the fact that the policy process has been generally driven by "needs assessments", an approach that this is well understood by the rural public and the many institutions of civil society and the state.

Taking a positive view of rural areas (Rural Asset Thinking) was one of the "ideas" first discussed in this Think Tank series. Taking a "half-full" rather than a "half-empty" view of rural life prompts many new and interesting perceptions of rural Canada. At this first Think Tank, it was evident that rural Canada is full of very positive assets and while there is every need to be watchful of the deficits, growing and sustaining what we have may be more fruitful than seeking new and potentially unsustainable additions to rural life. Sustaining rural assets is in itself a formidable task as many of the assets identified in an Ontario study used in this Think Tank are highly threatened (i.e. health care, water quality, etc.). Sustaining what we have by reducing threats and bolstering the resources that support rural assets includes paying attention to the needs of people and communities. This means that "needs" can be tackled to support an asset, which reduces the randomness of reacting to "well articulated" needs in the policy process.

The theme of positive thinking was continued into the second Think Tank on Sustainable Livelihoods. The idea of sustaining livelihoods as a policy option is a "development" approach adopted from the third world and is firmly rooted in the positive action of starting where people are (with what they have: their assets) rather than where we think they ought to be. Livelihoods that can recover from shocks and stresses without degrading the environment or reducing the options of other people are considered sustainable.

When applied to Canadian rural situations this idea generated many thoughtful responses at the Think Tank session, as several occupations in rural Canada were considered not only vulnerable, but also unsustainable. Through a dialogue between Dr Naresh Singh of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Sheila Regher, (National Council of Welfare), the potential application of sustainable livelihoods thinking to poverty in rural Canada was considered, although the outcome was inconclusive. Livelihoods appear to be an innovative way to comprehend and value peoples lives in rural Canada.

The third Think Tank on Measuring Rural Values was based on the work of Dr. Ron Colman (Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI) Atlantic). The question of values had risen frequently in the first two Think Tanks, and the challenge of how to make judgements on "progress" was hotly debated. The inadequacy of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measures was agreed upon, but the question of suitable alternatives was left open. A good case in point was how to measure the assets that people had identified as important in rural Canada, especially the ones that have "soft" aspects such as "sense of community." Even the term "health" as a value is challenging as its meaning tends to vary with each person who declares it to be important. The debate was around such things as "feelings", notions of social capital, and non-tangibles in rural development. It is in this context that Dr Ron Colman presented the "Genuine Progress Indicators" model that offers intriguing possibilities for policy makers.

Getting Around (or not) in Rural Canada, was the title of the fourth Think Tank. The first part of the agenda focussed on those who find it difficult to get around: youth, elderly, and those with disabilities. Getting around in today's rural world, in the "Arena Society" ⁽¹⁾(Fuller, 1994), is vital to health and productivity. Personal mobility is part of being "normal" in the rural context. In the absence of public transportation, mobility becomes a question of rural access to automotive transportation. Distance and low population density become negative determinants of low mobility for some people in rural areas. Recent research demonstrates that "transportation in rural areas is a genuine rural problem". It affects the most vulnerable, adds to cost of production and, because of the dependence on the automobile, is a growing environmental issue.

The second part of the session focussed on rural roads and related infrastructure such as bridges. It is evident that rural roads are vital for the farming community, for other production sectors, recreation and tourism, commuting, and for community viability. Where financial responsibility for rural roads has been downloaded to local municipalities, the maintenance of rural transportation infrastructure represents a particular future challenge. Overall, rural transportation is rural Canada's forgotten issue.

The changing relationship between agricultural and rural interests in the countryside was the topic of Think Tank five, Agriculture and Rural Development: Crossing the Divide. Based on the notion of land as the common denominator for rural interests (farming, manufacturing, tourism, residential, cottaging etc.), the situation can be simplified: if 20% of farms produce 80% of the value of production, and the remaining 80% of land owners have other livelihood interests, then can we expect agricultural policy to be good rural policy? Based on the land equation, the answer is no. Most rural land is occupied, at least in central Canada, by people with interests other than/in addition to agriculture. In general, their economic and environmental responsibilities fall under rural development. However, there is no coherent rural development policy dealing with land use assets in Canada, there are only parts of other policies that affect people and businesses in rural areas. This was one of the perspectives discussed at the fifth Think Tank.

Another idea discussed was that of "multifuctionality". Landowners could be paid for all the public goods that they produce or maintain on their properties, allowing the market to furnish them with returns for private goods produced on farm or rural land. An update on this debate in Europe was presented by Dr John Bryden of the Arkleton Centre at the University of Aberdeen, UK. The wider issue of whether agricultural and rural development should be combined in the same policy envelope was also actively discussed.

The sixth Think Tank, on Putting Community back in Community Development, was introduced in the following way:

"There is a renewed interest in the well-being of rural places and especially in the means of sustaining and building on rural assets in an era of globalization. The objective is to review what are the common elements (core competencies) of contemporary rural community development and to question how community colleges are currently equipped and orientated to respond to this opportunity."

The approach taken was to review local economic development principles as presented by David Douglas (University of Guelph) and represented as "core competencies" by Carolyn Pletsch (Ontario Agricultural Training Institute (OATI) Learning Group). This was followed by Barbara Brolin (Sir Sandford Flemming College) and Brian Bender (College d'Alfred) who commented on which elements of community development work already exists at their colleges. The Think Tank chair, Lynden Johnson (Association of Canadian Community Colleges), also commented on the connection between colleges and their community role. It is evident that many colleges already engage in innovative community work and it was agreed that a review of these initiatives would be of potential value to those not already involved in community development.

In general, although six separate Think Tanks were organized, at least three cross cutting themes emerged that warrant further discussion, more research and greater policy attention. The first is rural assets thinking, a topic that filtered across all the discussions at the Think Tank series. The second was the issue of measurement, which was always seen as important when the question of policy implications came into focus. The third theme was that of complexity. Almost all the topics were touched upon only lightly, as it always became evident that most ideas are highly interrelated and require careful assessment before they can be evaluated properly for policy purposes. With respect to ideas, however, the Think Tank series was valuable in promoting innovative ways of thinking about rural Canada.

INTRODUCTION

Discussion of new ideas and information creates an environment of "openness" and a form of "readiness" towards new societal demands and opportunities. Think Tanks are one way to create this atmosphere of excitement and interest in new information and ideas.

One of the main purposes of a Think Tank style meeting is to focus attention on subjects of interest to a wide variety of people and to generate discussion, which would not otherwise take place. The outcomes therefore are not predictable. If the objective is to get "outside the box", then this type of Think Tank is useful.

Think Tanks themselves are not intended to deliver solutions and answers to deliberate questions. They are an investment in a learning culture that may take time to mature or realize. Discussion at Think Tanks often reassures us about what we are already doing and may add confidence to a group that is willing to seek new ideas.

The Rural Secretariat presented a six part Think Tank series that took place throughout the Fall 2001 and Winter 2002. Following each workshop/seminar, Professor Tony Fuller (University of Guelph) who organized the series prepared a "record of discussion document", and any follow-up or outcomes that would be of value to note. The following sections contain the overview of each session, the material presented and a summary record of the discussion.

1. Think Tank One: Rural Asset Thinking

Overview:

AN ASSETS APPROACH TO VALUING RURAL CANADA
Professor Tony Fuller
University of Guelph

Assessing and measuring rural assets is a positive way of valuing what we have and want to keep in rural Canada. The information acquired in this data-gathering approach is affirmative with respect to what we all think is important about rural life. It becomes vital information for political and strategic representation of the "rural". Assets are what we want to keep, build upon and sustain for future generations.

The assets approach is both positive and inclusive:

• Rural assets sustain livelihoods, in both rural and urban areas.
• Assets include both public and private goods.

Measuring assets is usually done by calculating the total value of goods and services produced in rural areas and assets are often expressed as Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The assessment becomes much more powerful, however, if to this calculus is added a view of what is important about rural Canada from the perspective of the rural population, the people who live and work amid the rural assets themselves. To the GDP and rural perspective on assets should also be added the urban view of what is valuable about rural Canada.

In summary, rural assets are those popularly recognized attributes of rural areas that are considered essential for the maintenance of livelihoods, both rural and urban, and vital for the sustainability of the economy, society and the environment in rural Canada.

Summary of discussion:

PART ONE: The Assets Approach to Valuing "Rural"

The following paragraphs summarize Professor Tony Fuller's presentation "The Assets Approach to Valuing Rural Ontario".

Assets as Values. The concept of viewing assets as values was well received. It was generally felt that rural values are important and that we should pay more attention to how they are articulated and used to influence decisions and behaviour. The point was illustrated by the two broad uses of the term "health"; health as medical service as well as health as metaphor, as in the determinants of health. From the rural dialogues, as many people felt that "living in rural Ontario was healthy" as did the number who felt that rural health services are important. Both are interdependent and highly threatened.

There was a good deal of discussion on how values can or should be measured. The resources supporting values are easier to deal with in measurement terms than values. It is also important to note that although people have values, communities do not, or do they? If a community decides to exclude the development of a big box complex, is it expressing a value, or set of values, and if so which ones?

The Assets Wheel. It was felt that this was a key construction in the process and that it could look different for different purposes. The key linkage was that the assets in the Assets Wheel as presented for the Ontario Rural Dialogue could also be seen as "capital". As capital (i.e. natural, financial, social, etc.) is "tradable" they can be transferred as assets and used to produce new assets. When assets are seen as capital they are particularly useful for community development as well as policy assessment. Importantly, capital links this aspect of the Assets approach to Sustainable Livelihoods thinking, the subject of Think Tank two.

Assets Combine: Needs Divide. This maxim was generally agreed to by the participants at the Assets Think Tank, although some were uncomfortable with the diminution of "needs" approach, which testifies to the long association we have had with needs thinking.

Assets as "rights". This suggestion, that we may be witnessing the development of a new generation of "rights", created good discussion. Some felt that the expectation of water as a right was intriguing and probable, others felt that water was a more temporary issue, (the Walkerton factor) and would "go away". The concept of assets becoming "rights" was compelling, especially when resources supporting an asset were highly threatened such as access to rural schools and health services.

Scales of development. The two community based speakers at the meeting (Ethel Cote and Trish McNamara) expressed the view that asset mapping and especially asset building was best done at the community level. This led to a discussion of the appropriate scales at which asset thinking is best applied. In addition to the local scale of asset development advocated by Luther Snow (see the North Bay Report), the regional scale of application was deemed important. This would reflect the integrated multi-community nature of many rural areas and was tagged as important for labour markets and service delivery systems in particular. Differences in settlement patterns and population distribution were recognized for rural and remote areas in the North. The regional aspect of this discussion linked well to a later point about the Community Future's program being structured at the multi-community level.

PART TWO: Rural Assets and Policy Implications

Key Issues: Mary Robertson, The Ontario Rural Council (TORC)

Rural imaging. The presentation, described bellow, demonstrated the utility of viewing "rural" as a combination of valuable assets. The participants at the Think Tank felt that the positive imaging emerging through TORC around "rural" is inventive and purposeful. Animated discussion around rural-urban images of each other led to the general conclusion that both urban and rural are combined in many ways such that understanding them as a whole is often a good conceptual and operational approach. A measure of urban views of "rural" needs to be done.

Common Cause. The attribute of common cause, rather than fractured and competitive cause (needs) was discussed, particularly in relation to agriculture and the family farm. It was important to recognize that over 60% of the Ontario rural dialogue participants voted for agriculture and family farms, which means a far wider spectrum of rural people support farming activities in the countryside, than just the farm population. Supporting the family farm still has resonance in rural Canada. A show of support for agriculture by non-farm people is important for policy in the current climate of constraint and uncertainty in farming.

Asset Groupings. The participants found it useful to make reference to groups of assets to assess their worth in policy and program terms. The main groupings that emerged include:

Rural assets: assets that reside mainly in rural (i.e., sense of community)
Urban assets: assets common to both urban & rural health care
Public assets: roads
Private assets: farm land
Federal assets: Community Futures program
Provincial assets: health care delivery
Pure assets (no threats): sense of community
Threatened assets: health care system, water

Finally, there were those assets that were considered to be "policy sensitive". These would include health, education and training, and jobs where the state already has major investments and considerable influence, as opposed to "sense of community" which is important, but difficult to influence from the central levels of government.

Perhaps the most policy sensitive asset described by the Ontario Rural Dialogue participants was telecommunications. It was evident from the telecommunications groups that formed at 5 of the 6 dialogues, as well as in the main conference in North Bay, that there is massive appreciation of the advantages of "connectivity". The ability of central government agencies to directly influence the state of telecommunications in rural and remote Canada was clearly felt at the Think Tank and discussion confirmed the importance of the Broadband initiative.

Asset Linkages. The linkages between the assets were demonstrated by the "unpacking" of the jobs and diversified economy asset. Almost all federal and provincial government agencies are directly or indirectly involved in sustaining the diversified economy which in turn maintains a range of diversified jobs. Much of this linkage is not realized, remains unmeasured and remains undervalued.

The water asset, which is unpacked in a different way (not using the assets wheel), was not discussed due to lack of time. Another way of seeing the linkages between assets and resources was illustrated by arranging the Health asset in the centre, with all the other top five assets around it to demonstrate the linkages. It may be that this could become an asset map of rural Canada.

In all asset analysis (unpacking), the complexity of the linkages and interdependencies was appreciated and led to several observations about "complexity" as an important issue.

Application. The most forthright application of the assets approach was suggested for trial with the Community Futures program, under Federal Economic Development Initiative in Northern Ontario (FedNor) within Industry Canada. The local/regional nature of the community futures groups and the governance structures that are in place could facilitate an application of the assets approach for future planning.

It was in this context that discussion took place about the idea of "sustainability". Sustaining and building on locally recognized assets was seen as a possibility in the regional context, given the multi community mode of delivering services and administering rural areas. The recent municipal amalgamations and service restructuring efforts in Ontario was seen as a case in point.

Conclusion:

Much discussion took place about the measurement of assets, especially the soft assets, such as "sense of community". It was agreed that a Think Tank session on measurement would be useful as many departments are already engaged in indicator work for measuring impact, performance or for benchmarking. TORC expressed a long-term interest in creating a system of rural audits.

2. Think Tank Two: Sustainable Livelihoods

Overview:

SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS: A NEW CONTRIBUTION TO
RURAL POLICY THINKING?
Professor Tony Fuller
University of Guelph

The problem with the discussion about Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) is that it is new, comes from the South, and is mainly aimed at poverty alleviation. What then can SL offer Canada with its G8 economy, and its relatively low levels of unemployment and poverty when compared to Third World countries?

When posed in this way, the question is not easy to answer. It does however give rise to some interesting questions. How different are some of the problems between developing and developed countries? When considering rural areas in particular, the issue of adjusting to globalization is a matter of degree rather than absolute difference. The structure of livelihoods may look very different across the globe, but the forces that produce livelihood patterns are probably similar, if not the same.

This provocative assertion gives rise to at least two questions which can inform the Canadian rural debate:

1. Does SL in its original form have anything in common with issues such as poverty in rural Canada?
2. Can SL thinking help us to look at rural policy development in Canada in different and useful ways?

Both questions have several SL characteristics in common:

• Sustainable Livelihood thinking is a positive approach
• It is asset based
• The unit of analysis is the household
• An important component is governance
• Entitlements are also a central idea in livelihood assessment

Sustainable Livelihoods thinking will enable us to review some familiar aspects of rural life in a different a potentially refreshing way. It is an open question as to whether the SL concept will have any important policy implications for rural Canada.

Summary of discussion:

THE SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS APPROACH: Dr. Naresh Singh (UNDP)

Dr Singh put forward a series of points on the key policy questions that he felt were important to understanding the potential application of the SL idea to rural development in Canada: Sustainable Livelihoods in Rural Canada: toward an interactive policy framework 

There were a number of questions seeking clarification during Dr Singh's presentation and these mainly focused on the international application of SL. In order to have some discussion on the Canadian possibilities and comment on some of the critical issues, Sheila Regerh was invited to present her critique.

Key Issues: Sheila Regerh (Director, National Council of Welfare)

Unit of analysis

The "individual in relation" has advantages over the household as the basic unit of analysis.

Household is a social structure and individual members have a different relation to, and claim on resources, family and friends, services, public goods, governments, governance and the market. One of the most critical problems with market-driven approaches are that they tend to ignore the role of children and those who care for them - looking at the household as a single unit has the same conceptual flaw. For example, women and men have different patterns of off-farm work, depending on type of farm as well as their own personal situation and this affects access to independent income, services, Employment Insurance and Canada Pension Plans.

References to individuals and households or families are sometimes used imprecisely and this can cause difficulties in understanding a situation and designing relevant policies. For example, we in Canada talk about improving the attachment of low-income families to the labour market. Families, however, are not attached to the labour market, individuals are. A policy design that ignores this could have the effect of providing incentives for families with two adults that simply don't work for lone parents or of encouraging male employment while actually discouraging female employment.

Family and household formation is dynamic, with any individual moving through several different arrangements throughout the life cycle - and the patterns of movement are not the same for all family members.

Assets

The spatial concept is very important, particularly in a rural context.

The dimension of time, however, is not given as much prominence, yet it would add significantly to the basic framework of assets/wealth stocks. The time element is central because it is the keyway in which non-market economic activity is measurable and comparable to market activity (and Canada is about the best in the world at being able to do this). Non-market activity is usually invisible, trivialized, or treated as insignificant, when it fact it occupies more of people's time than market work does. In rural areas there is often a continuous blending of activities that have both market and non-market outcomes (i.e., food from the same crop grown for sale and household consumption)

Time could be considered under human capital but also under natural capital as it is a finite and non-renewable resource for individuals (everyone has 24 hours days, childhood cannot be reclaimed if essential development does not take place. Under human capital, time available reflects labour capacity for both market and non-market work, including care. The reproductive, regenerative capacity needed to develop and maintain human capital is also the foundation of social capital (social relations, trust in social institutions). Health is also a related aspect of the human capital of a population (knowledge, skill, etc., not much use if you are sick).

It is interesting that livestock is included in the framework under human-made capital but not humans - the creation of human capital is a human endeavour and requires conceptually similar care, feeding and investment for capital to be built up.

Goals

It is important to have a clear articulation of the goals of sustainable livelihoods. There seems to be a heavy leaning toward the market, including in the use of terminology, that may limit or confuse discussions around the sustainable livelihoods concept and how it may be used. If the goals include meeting basic needs, increased productivity and an improved quality of life or standard of living, then this embodies more than traditionally understood economic development and growth. It must therefore integrate health, safety, time for sleep, human capital development, recreation, culture etc. in the framework - the things that quality of life indicators measure.

Gender

Tends to get mentioned everywhere but it still is rarely treated in the rigorous way it requires.

The challenge is to get beyond thinking just about women and men as individuals or even equality or fairness, but to understand the gendered pattern of economic structures and societal institutions and how they impact efforts to create sustainable livelihoods, rural or urban. For example, the way in which care and human capital development is managed in a society is essential to how productive and sustainable it will be. But it is largely women who sustain the non-market care economy and even though we now are able to measure it, this information is vastly underutilized. If we overlook this work we also, overlook about a third of men's work time too.

It is also critical to understand the concept of substantive equality, where equality does not mean sameness (i.e. how to reach equality in one generation).

Developed and developing countries

Understanding the whole economy and the relationship between market and non-market work, as well as what each contributes, matters tremendously for all countries and is a tool to link theory and practice. This helps to determine how shifts will affect people, what services need to be provided and how to maximize the effectiveness of each. Discussions between developed and developing countries at the World Summit on Sustainable Development on people-centred, sustainable development were very much about finding some alternatives to one-dimensional traditional market-based economic growth models. Individual countries and delegates varied widely in their perspectives, however Canada, as it often does, worked hard to bridge the gaps.

Helps sort out the specifics of different contexts, i.e., in Canada we have virtually no informal sector and in developing countries it is huge. Non-market work valuation helps in a practical way to deal with vague or fuzzy concepts or matters that may appear to be "spiritual" or lifestyle/personal preference issues that not much can be done about in policy or measurement terms. We can, for example, measure the amount of work involved in raising children in a society, which has public policy implications, as distinct from emotional ties to our individual offspring.

Rural and urban

Sustainable livelihood theory should work for both.

Poverty alleviation focus

There are many critics of targeting as an approach to preventing, reducing or alleviating poverty. This approach has not proved very successful in developed countries. In Canada poverty rates have improved little over the past 20 or 30 years. The exception is among seniors where the introduction of a universal public pension system has improved the situation of seniors dramatically. Studies have also shown that our universal K-12 education system helps smooth out inequalities among children from different economic backgrounds. Targeted policy approaches have tended to target people living in poverty rather than the structural causes and consequences of poverty, such as precarious labour market conditions or low wages, or lack of public support for pre-school children. Targeting may also not be a very sustainable strategy, given that over time it tends to erode wider public support for programs.

A focus that includes poverty, and emphasizes the costs of poverty to the population at large, common structural issues as well as inequality more generally, might be preferable, especially in developed countries where there already is a history of relatively well-developed social protection mechanisms. This situation is unlike many developing countries where poverty is widespread, of long duration, infrastructure is practically non-existent and even subsistence needs are a challenge to meet.

Points of Discussion:

1. It was made clear that in terms of poverty, the SL approach was useful in valuing the assets of all people, but that it did not tackle the systemic issues that produce poverty in the first place.

2. Interesting discussions about livelihood "activities" based on the differences in activity patterns that change through time. Activities change, but the pattern of activity is often the same. However, the space required to satisfy contemporary sets of activity is very much greater than in the past.

RURAL LIVELIHOODS: Then and Now (Professor Tony Fuller)

Livelihoods in Upper Canada at the time of settlement were generally like this:

Cutting and clearing forest land, the logging connected with land improvement, making pails or tubs for the house, spinning, making linen for bags as well as for the house, making boots, mittens, and harnesses from the hides they had tanned on shares, splitting and making shingles for the roof, making cane furniture, melting pewter and making spoons with moulds, shoeing horses, leaching ashes and boiling lye to make potash for sale, labouring on public roads as required by statute, slaughtering meat for the household, transporting products to market and hauling in all building supplies, splitting rails for fences, and digging the well. (Wietfeldt, 1976, p. 208).

Today a generic description of the structure of contemporary rural livelihoods would look something like:

It has been observed that a household of four to five people might be engaged in three or four jobs (a mix of full-time, part-time, and occasional work). One of these jobs at least is likely to be home-based, someone will commute for up to an hour to work, one way; the household will have about five income streams, and it will have third sector (voluntary) activities, (including being on boards or committees for which expenses are paid), as well as engaging in social activities for themselves and their children which involve driving more than 100 kilometers a week. (Fuller et al. 2000).

There are two points to highlight from this contrast:

1. Both livelihood structures (Then and Now), although very different in kind, are similar in the fact that they are pluri-active (i.e., they consist of many different activities).
   
   
2. The two livelihood structures differ mainly in the space that they occupy. The settler livelihood is based on farm and local activities. The contemporary livelihood is based on a much wider "reach" to satisfy livelihood needs.

Points of Discussion:

1. From the above discussion came a new point about "time" being an asset in and of itself. Some would say that we are beginning to value time more than money. We use money to buy time that was lost in the overtime that was needed to earn more money!
   
   
2. The recognition of what was formally considered work was also discussed, and this led to the recognition that in rural Canada informal and third sector work (socially useful work) is a major contributor to the lifestyle of many people. It is rarely counted however, and remains undervalued.
   
   
3. The robustness of rural lifestyles (i.e. if they recover well from shocks and stresses) was discussed in relation to Single Industry Towns (SITs). It was generally concluded that SITs are not sustainable in the SL sense. SITs have little control over the industries they support, the locus of power is external, and alternative activities to sustain livelihoods are few. Even when SITs are booming they are not generally considered sustainable in environmental terms. Given this type of prior knowledge, it should not be difficult to place policy emphasis on the highly vulnerable livelihoods of people in SITs.
   
   
4. This type of discussion reconfirmed Sheila Regerh's point about targeting. Perhaps policy emphasis should be on vulnerable groups or communities before a crisis can occur (readiness planning).
   
   
5. Some felt that SL in North America would have more promise if it focused on people rather than households. Others felt that the community was the best scale of analysis.
   
   
6. Scale became one of the main concluding points. It was evident to many that the point of intervention for examining SL depended very much on the scale of the system being discussed.
   
   
7. In SL thinking, governance transcends the scales of activity and is one reason why it is such an important component of development. SL thinking requires both top-down and bottom up interaction.
   
   
8. Good discussion transpired around the notion of CATE: Continuous Asset Transformation Engine, and what such engines would look like in Canada.

Conclusion:

It was noted that the next Think Tank would address the difficult question of measuring rural values many of which occur as components of Sustainable Livelihoods.

3. Think Tank Three: Measuring Rural Values

Overview:

Background Statement
Professor Tony Fuller
University of Guelph

A series of questions have arisen regarding the measurement of changing conditions in rural Canada. These questions are legion and fall into three categories:

• Questions regarding the measurement of rural conditions, i.e., rural assets (inventory).
  
  
• Questions of measuring change, deterioration or improvement, i.e., progress towards sustainability (development).
  
  
• Questions of attributing change or improvement to policy intervention, i.e. impact assessment (causality).

Ongoing attempts to answer some of these questions indicate a healthy state of affairs as it means that attention is being paid to rural Canada by public and private agencies. Unfortunately, many such agencies have limited resources and are constrained by conventional measures of success. This Think Tank is intended to contribute by focusing on new thinking in these areas.

Four trends converge to inform and shape the "measurement debate":

1. There is a growing realization that conventional measures of rural phenomena are inadequate. These so called "objective" measures, which generally derive from census type surveys, certainly help to describe rural conditions, but can be misleading when used to analyze issues for policy development.
   
   
2. The growth in the use of "qualitative" measures has created a more wide-open field of enquiry, but has, as yet, fallen short of being accepted by senior managers, economists, and policy makers.
   
   
3. The dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative measures is mirrored by the reductionist vs. the holism debate. Reducing reality to a tangible problem is much more attractive to policy makers because it becomes manageable and one can potentially measure the outcomes. Complexity, although attractive intellectually is a nightmare to deal with in terms of measurement and is thus generally avoided.
   
   
4. The last trend is the issue of who is involved in the whole measurement exercise. Whose values are being employed to judge outcomes: the planners and/or the people involved as clients, consumers, taxpayers etc. It is in this context that values become central to the measurement debate. Unfortunately, values are difficult to measure and to represent to decision-makers in ways that are acceptable as operational.

Overall, the increasing need for performance measures, evaluations, accountability and milestones, all create an increased need for measures of difference. That is difference in conditions over time, over space, and among groups. A salutary question in planning is always "what difference does it make?"

Finally, there is the awkward question of language. As measurement is debated and new methods are tried, the language of what is being produced, measured and for what purpose becomes crucial in understanding the importance of measurement. The term "measurement" itself suggests an exact science based on numeracy and precision. The debate however, is often around such things as "feelings", notions of social capital, and non-tangibles in rural development such as spirituality. What words except for collective terms for indicators have emerged which help us to move forward in this debate?

It is in this context that Dr Ron Colman presented the "Genuine Progress Indicators" model, which offers intriguing possibilities for policy makers. Presentations on GPI Atlantic can be found at: www.gpiatlantic.org

Summary of discussion:

THE MEASUREMENT DEBATE

Three tasks were identified to open the discussion:

1. measurement of rural conditions
2. measurement of change
3. impact assessment of policy intervention (causality)

A recap of the main themes of the previous Think Tanks was provided. The first, on "Rural Assets" illustrated that assets are positive, but hard to measure. For example, health is a major asset but how do we know when good health has been attained and sustained? Many assets focus on the broader theme of "quality of life". Not only is quality of life a difficult concept to define, but a question of who is defining it comes into play. The people overseeing definitions and measurement bring their own values into the process, which can cause varying results. The second Think Tank, on "Sustainable Livelihoods", addressed the question of what people do with their time. The major challenge becomes measuring the "other" activities that are not necessarily related to economic activity (i.e. volunteerism, leisure, etc.) because "livelihoods" then becomes harder to measure. Related to the idea of sustainable livelihoods is the concept of "community capacity building" which again is a difficult thing to define and measure (i.e. how do you know when community capacity has been reached?).

Based on the earlier Think Tanks, Dr Fuller observed that measurement has been a major challenge to new or good ideas because it makes those ideas difficult to implement (i.e. how do you convince your department/organization to start a new program when you cannot easily measure its performance?). Many ideas are abstract and hard to translate into measurable indicators, thereby causing problems when it comes time to prove program success (i.e. how do you measure something like increased community spirit?).

Measurement is not easy. For example, are norms the appropriate thing to measure? In addition, measurement in the traditional sense can be problematic because it is based on linear thinking and assumes cause. For example, if you are looking at the effects of a program over time can you really prove that the outcomes are due solely because of it? The implications are that impact assessment must be set up very carefully.

Group Exercise

Participants formed groups to define and describe these concepts: Trust, Safe Food, Ocean Health, Community, and The Values of Newcomers to Small Towns. Groups came up with these:

Trust

• Faith in something
• Communicating without fear of being judged
• A perception/assumption
• Has to be gained
• A measure of social capital (especially in the past)
• Sharing commonality

Safe Food

• Food that meets standards for safety and security in every step of the process
• Dissemination of information and practices

Ocean Health

• Supports marine life and ecosystems
• Absence of pollutants, etc.
• Sustains livelihoods

Community

Thinking as a group, being part of something

• Cooperation
• Participation
• Being non-selfish
• More than just being part of a group
• Has a capacity to reproduce itself

Value of Newcomers to Small Towns

• People come for various reasons, mainly because of the perceived quality of life (i.e. quiet, knowing your neighbours, etc.).

A key theme to come out of this exercise was perception. Perception has more to do with behavior than we realize. Can policy/programs be based on perception? Can we manage perceptions? People agreed that yes, they can. However some felt that this is done via statistics while others felt that policy guides this process. It was noted that governments have already moved to measuring outcomes as a way of solving the "causality" issue.

GENUINE PROGRESS INDEX (GPI): Ron Colman (GPI Atlantic)

Qualitative versus quantitative analysis is not an either/or situation. Qualitative data has to be hardened by quantitative data to give it some teeth. Generally we try to bridge the gap using one or the other. But we can never really know the impact of what we do.

The Community Progress Index project asked the questions "What in King's County you would like to leave to your children?" and "How would you measure this?" GPI worked closely with Statistics Canada to make the results comparable. How could indicators be used at the community level? Data is generally not available at the local level, which is why the project was initiated. It tried to remedy the concern that provincial statistics and information cannot accurately determine the quality of life at the local level.

In our society measures of progress are still based on economic growth. However, there are trends indicating that the "softer" quality of life issues such as security and safety and health are declining while materialism and wealth are rising. People may be earning more, but volunteerism in their community may be dwindling. For example, it is estimated that volunteer work has gone down by 8.5% but the government does not measure or mention this, even though it has serious implications, especially in rural areas. The loss of volunteer work is costing Canadians $4.7 billion worth of services.

Measurement in traditional terms has many flaws. For example, in Atlantic Canada organic soil matter has depleted by 30% but with chemicals we can still pump out the yields. What will the effects of this be down the road? What will it mean for issues like food security and safety in the future?

On one hand we use the word "health" to describe a strong economy but in reality a healthy economy may have negative effects on "health". For example, the pulp and paper industry is a major economic force in many areas but what will happen when there are no more trees?

Environmental disasters contribute more to the economy than we realize. For example, the Exxon Valdez oil spill off the west coast brought more value to Alaska's GDP than the oil the tanker held.

Society as a whole is to blame for this way of thinking: we are all sucked into the mantra "more is better". We use statistics the GDP index to measure well-being but even the original developer of the GDP said that GDP should not be used in this way.

We need new indicators that can tell a community where they want to be. Current indicators measure economic growth but ignore vital assets. Long-term preventative programs to reduce poverty and conserve the environment are not funded because the immediate economic gain outweighs the social loss down the road. For example, the government could feasibly ban tobacco or place extremely high taxes on cigarettes but what would the impact be on the economy? Indicators are important because they:

• Reflect what we value;
• Determine what makes it to the policy agenda;
• Influence behavior (what you measure gets attention and is thus deemed important).

This raises questions about the true effects of products like Biggie Fries. What is the true cost on the GDP down the road (i.e. in health care)? Should donuts be taxed in the same way as cigarettes? Should we be putting warning labels on high salt, high calorie, and high fat products like they do in Finland? One of the challenges is that measurement of these types of issues span over long periods of time. This does not fit with the four-year electoral cycle. Thus, what should be considered as a long-term preventative investment in society is really considered to be an expenditure. Political values on the whole are consistent (i.e. everybody wants a cleaner environment) but decisions do not reflect these values.

The question of who should guide the process in developing indicators came up. Should this occur as a top-down initiative or should it start at the community level resulting in a trickle-up effect? Response: the two go hand in hand. If it is driven at the community level then the community will be responsive to it, but how transferable is this to the larger context? On the other hand, governments have a lot of influence, which raises questions about their role as educators (i.e. preventative health). All levels need to be able to discuss these matters.

In terms of the rural context, developing indicators should be based on small questionnaires that are less expensive and easier to deliver. In Glace Bay the response rate was 81%! Communities need to be able to use the information they gather. The surveys should be community driven, and then the results will be made available locally.

A more systematic way needs to be developed, whereby local efforts to measure values (in GPIs or in Quality of Life indicators) can be registered centrally and analyzed to form a potential information base. Such benchmark indicators should be monitored annually for progress and default.

Conclusion:

The Think Tank engaged the participants in which they discussed and demonstrated the following:

• Concern with over-used measures such as GDP.
• Fear of what we may be doing to the environment.
• Concern over the food system.
• Concern over the health system.
• Concern over profit making in what could be defined as the "public interest" sector (i.e. water, oceans, etc.).
• Are we seeing new expectations (entitlements) from the people toward central governments?
• Community matters.

According to the attendees at this Think Tank, values are almost always commonly held perceptions.

4. Think Tank Four: Getting Around (or not) in Rural Canada

Overview:

GETTING AROUND (OR NOT) IN RURAL CANADA
Professor Tony Fuller
University of Guelph

This Think Tank was comprised of presentations and intermittent discussion on four separate research scans undertaken between 1999 and 2001. Although the focus of the scans was on rural Ontario, a comparative dimension was also included from across Canada and the border-states of the USA. It was generally observed that although transportation was not a critical subject in its own right, it came up consistently as a component of almost all matters dealing with rural service provision and the labour market in rural areas.

Rural society in Canada is a mobile society. Getting around in rural Canada is a vital element in maintaining the health and productivity of the economy as well as the integrity of society. Mobility in the absence of public transportation in most rural areas becomes a question of access to automotive transportation. Not everyone has full access to a vehicle however whether for income, age or locational reasons. In contemporary society, mobility is required for social and recreational purposes as well as for health, shopping and child rearing activities. Commuting is probably the most important demand on mobility. Delivering services to people in their homes, (our national policy outlook is to limit the costs of premature institutionalisation), also depends largely on reducing rural space to deliver services such as home-care, meals-on-wheels, and friendly visiting.

In addition to dependence on automotive transportation, rural society is also dependent on rural roads. Roads and road infrastructure (bridges and road maintenance such as snow plowing) are an integral part of the rural economy, as well as important for meeting the social needs of society. Farms especially depend on roads, in the Prairie provinces where the switch from rail -to- road for grain transportation is ongoing, where bulk milk tankers need to get around the countryside and where farmers themselves need to get machinery and equipment to outlying fields. Rural tourism depends largely on people getting to and from their rustic destinations, often in remote environments. Commuting to jobs in the metro-adjacent areas of Canada requires well-maintained roads and snow removal in winter. Roads are probably an undervalued asset in rural Canada.

The question of getting around in rural Canada to satisfy needs, meet obligations, get to work or school, as well as to meet quality of life goals, involves a mix of private and public elements. Car transport is private, but the road system may be considered a public good. Influencing who gets around may be a question of public policy, personal expectations and means, and community capacity to organize and make a difference.

These public, private and community issues in respect to rural transportation were the subject of discussion at Think Tank four. Updated material, as well as some new ideas scanned from the research, (i.e., taken from the literature and from discussions with rural residents in Ontario) formed the basis of discussion. Given the central role that transportation takes in the lives of rural citizens, it is important to review what we know and can do to improve rural transportation in Canada.

Summary of discussion:

WHY "GETTING GROUND" IS IMPORTANT
Professor Tony Fuller
University of Guelph

Getting around is considered to be an important part of a normal productive life in rural Canada. From an individual and family perspective, not getting around is a form of disadvantage that in most rural areas is hard to overcome because of the lack of public transportation. Today, rural transportation issues are mostly to do with access to and use of automotive vehicles.

In the past however, getting around was important but much less widespread. Trips were fewer, distances shorter. When horses were the only mode of transportation, the reach of travel was limited to the local town. Towns had been located on the landscape every 10 to 12 miles to accommodate travel into and out of service centres by horse-drawn conveyance in one day. As trips were limited by how far one could travel by horse or horse- drawn vehicle, we may refer to this era as the "Short Distance Society". In most parts of Canada, the "Short-Distance Society" lasted as the main means of getting around for between 50 to 150 years. This use of Arena Society thinking (Fuller, 1994), enables us to more fully grasp the impact of the automobile on personal mobility and on the rural communities of Canada in the twentieth century. With services (education, hospital, retail) located today in different places in a system of small towns, it is up to the individual to "get around" if they want their family to participate in 'normal' rural life. Finally, this is compounded by the distances that people seem willing to travel to their place of work. Rather than move the whole family, people are increasingly willing to stay in their home and travel further and further to work. All this has produced a "culture of mobility". Although telecommunications have reduced distance somewhat in many rural places, the number of people able to take advantage of Information and Communication Technologies (ITCs) is still relatively small.

If getting around is normal, then those that can't get around may be considered transportation disadvantaged. Transportation disadvantage is variable and is not easily defined. It depends on the many different causes of immobility (personal, institutional, structural and environmental and locational) and the transportation alternatives that may be available in the household and/or in the community.

THE TRANSPORTATION DISADVANTAGED "Getting Around (or not) in Rural Canada"

A. SCAN ONE: RURAL YOUTH AND MOBILITY, AN EMERGING TRANSPORTATION ISSUE
By: Kathleen Kaye

Between May and August 2000, a research study was conducted on youth transportation issues in rural Ontario. A series of 9 focus groups were conducted in various small towns across the province. Additional information was gathered from a short survey, a literature review and website postings from youth on the Internet.

The literature revealed that there are several factors that affect the ability of young people to access transportation in rural areas. There is a high dependency on single occupant vehicles (SOV) in rural areas and many young people do not have access to their own vehicle or the family vehicle, or they do not have their driver's license. In relation to this point, the Graduated License System (GLS) is a factor that limits rural youth more directly because of the restrictions in usage and the length of time required to obtain a full license. There is also the issue around the lack of public transportation, which in turn limits mobility for many rural citizens, including young people. This relates to the urban bias in the development of transportation services that frequently affects rural citizens in a negative way.

Nearly 80 rural youth participated in the nine focus groups that were held in rural areas throughout various regions of Ontario. These areas include : Bracebridge, Barry's Bay, Durham, Manitoulin Island (Sheguiandah), Paris, Strathroy, Tweed, Winchester and Woolwich. The participants were all between the ages of 15 and 24 and this age group was chosen based on the United Nations' defenition of youth.

The focus group sessions were entitled "Lets Get Moving" and the design was based on the "Community Action Planning Kit" that was developed by Wayne Caldwell, University of Guelph. The focus group method consisted of a series of four questions that led to discussions by the youth about their transportation needs and possible solutions. They discussed the ideas both as a whole and in small working groups to identify and develop ideas on how to address their transportation needs.

Main findings from this research study came out of the "Lets Get Moving" focus group discussions. The four common transportation issues for rural youth are:

• The rural nature of transportation issues in terms of the distance that must be traveled in order to get to desired destinations;
• Financial aspects/expense of transportation;
• Access to rides and;
• Weather conditions.

Typical weekly activities that require transportation for young people include social activities, friends and jobs, and the most common modes of transportation to get to these activities were driving, getting a ride or using a bicycle. Activities that were considered to present transportation challenges were getting to social activities, to visit friends or to attend sports/recreation events. Overall, the three main mobility challenges related to expensive prices for gas, lack of public transportation and not having access to a ride.

Youth solutions to mobility issues included implementing regular bus services, purchasing vehicles, easing the difficulties in obtaining a license, increasing car-pooling networks, adding more trails for cyclists, and increasing parent co-operation. When these issues were discussed further in small groups, the findings resulted in the following areas:

• Car-pooling, network of drivers and car coops
• Use already existing services (buses to special events/school buses)
• Form partnerships with organizations and businesses to increase access
• Improve bike safety standards and increase bike paths
• Modifications to the GLS in rural areas
• Increase the number of emergency pay phones

Therefore, young people in rural areas recognize that they have certain challenges with respect to transportation, and they have creative solutions to these challenges. The rural nature of transportation in itself can be a challenge, but for younger people, it can be especially trying. Many of the suggestions put foreward by the youth participants could be implemented easily, or could build upon existing resources. Further attention is needed on this topic in order to address more accurately the issues that are facing the rural youth of today.

Discussion:

There is not a lot of literature on this topic, however, the existing literature does show that particular problems faced by youth are exacerbated by the following factors, characteristic of rural areas:

• Rural areas have a high proportion of seasonal work positions.
• Transportation funding is often population based.
• Automobiles are expensive for youth to own and other transportation costs are high due to long distances.
• License acquisition is time consuming and leads into late teenage years
• Land-use planning and dispersion of settlements/jobs/schools, etc. make it difficult for youth to get around (the Arena Society).
• There is heavy dependence on parents to get around.
• School bus regulations are not flexible.
• Hitchhiking can be a problem, though not so much in Canada as in other parts of the world.

It was noted during the presentation that 30% of youth said that they could not get to a place of employment at certain times and that 50% of rural youth said that they've turned down jobs because of the transportation needs involved. This relates to the issue of out-migration of young people to urban centres. Transportation issues can limit social activities, which can in turn affect self-esteem:

• Limitations in job searching is a key issue for youth leaving rural areas. There may be jobs in the area, but not in their local community.
• Defining youth is key: older youth have different transportation means and experiences than younger youth.
• What is the impact on youth of rising gas taxes? Expenses such as gas, insurance are very high.
• Critical mass is an issue. Some dangerous activities have occurred in Ontario (i.e. Strathroy) where youth were hopping trains to try and get around.
• Taking things to youth is also an option. Human Resources Development Canada has attempted to remedy some issues by bringing services to smaller communities. For example, they have a mobile computer trailer that they can bring into rural areas.
• Technology does provide for more access to information and communication, but it does not solve all of the issues. For example, people still need to go to job interviews.
• Many rural jobs involve mobility and travel which is a barrier to youth.
• Have things really changed that much since the past? A point was raised that the GLS really only affects school aged kids.
• Distance is not the only issue: we also have to look at time. The time spent traveling hasn't really changed but distances have. In coastal communities and single industry towns there is a very different story in terms of the time it takes to "get around" (i.e. to the next town).
• Transportation comes up as an issue all the time when looking at other social factors such as abuse, health, and the economy.
• There is some public transportation in rural areas: inter-city buses pass through some rural areas and will stop in small towns. Such buses are usually used by people who are not of working age or by special groups (such as the Mennonites in the study area).

Incomes in general are different in rural communities. In terms of the big picture, incomes must be addressed in relation to transportation. Is transportation a determinant of health? In Prescott-Russell research is being carried out to see how many jobs require a car. In addition, Statistics Canada is working on a "travel to work" survey: 1996 Census: Labour force activity, occupation and industry, place of work, mode of transportation to work, unpaid work (Released on the DAILY - Tuesday, March 17, 1998). This article is found at: http://dissemination.statcan.ca/Daily/English/980317/d980317.htm#ART1

B. SCAN TWO: ELDERLY AND DISABLED INDIVIDUALS IN RURAL CANADA
By: Marni Herold

Introduction

The difficult situation that elderly people often find themselves in with regard to transportation in rural areas is well known. It first came to the attention of researchers and health planners in many countries in the late 1970s with efforts to de-institutionalize senior citizens. The elderly who live at home longer become increasingly dependent on family, friends and neighbours for rides to satisfy their needs. This realization is consistent with the continuum of care notion that also grew up towards the end of the last century: this perspective relates housing, health care and transportation together as primary conditions for the maintenance of the elderly in rural and small town Canada. Although much (mostly gerontological) attention has been paid to health care, and some to housing, it is not clear what attention has been paid to transportation for the rural elderly.

This scan of the literature is an attempt to remedy this issue. What, if anything, has changed or improved in terms of rural transportation for the elderly and people with disabilities in rural areas? If this is the main question; then others quickly follow. What are the current demographics? For example, are seniors still moving into small towns? What transportation needs are being served, and by whom, and at what cost? In general, are these conditions sufficient and satisfactory?

In order to answer some of these questions, the researchers consulted the literature and talked to key informants. Because the literature proved disappointingly sparse in relation to transportation issues, other information was gathered from various surveys and sources. Not a great deal of progress appears to have been made, and some might say that transportation is 'the forgotten issue' in rural areas. On the ground, in a whole host of rural communities however, provisions have been made to assist the elderly and the disabled, such that the picture is unclear as to what exactly the situation is regarding the rural elderly and their transportation needs.

This report is an attempt to review the situation, to report on the literature, to compare with what was known previously, and to make suggestions about progress and problems. It is limited by the conditions of a scan, in that it is neither a systematic review nor an analysis of primary data. In the first section, an extensive literature review is made. In section two, a small survey of service providers is used to report on agency issues. Section four contains a literature review of transportation issues and disabled individuals. Finally, an extensive review of transportation issues in rural America is included to add a comparative dimension to the scan.

Presentation

Rural households in Canada generally face several conditions that affect their mobility. These conditions are increasingly problematic for rural residents who are elderly or disabled. The conditions include:

• Most rural households own, or have access to a personal automobile
• Few public transportation services exist
• The rural elderly are dependant on having access to personal automobiles
• When an automobile is not available, problems arise
• There are few alternatives available for meeting the transportation needs of the rural residents who are elderly or disabled.

Why is it still a problem? What the literature says

Transportation is an ongoing problem for the elderly and physically disabled residents of rural areas. This is despite an increase in car ownership:

• More than 30 years of studies support this
• Various societal changes shape the problem differently over time. At the present, de-institutionalization, centralization, the growing number of elderly residents in general, the professionalization of the volunteer sector (third sector), and the reliance on the personal automobile are factors forcing the rural transportation dilemma into the 21^st century.
• The same main problem has existed for more than 25 years - lack of affordable, accessible transportation services where personal mobility as an essential component of well-being. Issues that have been present for the past 20 years include the vast differences of rural communities for one another, the increasing cost of both providing and using transportation services in rural areas, as well as ongoing insurance and licensing barriers.

Recent Societal Changes

Increases in home-care services, which encourage independence through de-institutionalization, have decreased the transportation problem. However, problems still exist in areas where seniors must travel to services themselves.

The centralization of health, education and social services has led to the consolidation of services, which has resulted in a changing dynamic for rural community transportation. Rural residents must travel further, and for longer periods then they had in the past and when compared to their urban counterparts, in order to gain access to treatment facilities, hospitals, schools and community activity centres.

Seniors are a fast growing population group in Canada. By 2021, it is expected that there will be about 7 million seniors in Canada, representing 19% of the total population. In the year 2000, there was an estimated 3.8 million Canadian residents over the age of 65. Approximately 24% of this population live in rural areas.

The reliance on the personal automobile has shaped funding agendas. As it becomes easier for people with an accessible vehicle to be mobile (improvements to infrastructure, etc.), a greater division between those with cars, and those without, is formed (i.e. people who do not have access to an automobile, or who cannot afford to travel the required distances, may be left unable to obtain necessary services.

With increasing cut-backs to social services, a higher demand is being placed on the volunteer sector to provide transportation services. This situation may be exacerbated by recent trends with respect to volunteer participation (i.e. recruiting and retaining adequate numbers of volunteers).

On-going issues

The cost of both using and providing a transportation service in rural areas is problematic for the rural elderly and physically disabled, and for the service providers of these populations. Several additional barriers to providing transportation services for rural elderly and disabled residents exist, they include:

• The use of transportation options is shaped by attitudes, preferences and trends of the rural elderly population. The literature suggests that informal services through friends and family are most likely to be used. However, this type of service is not available to all rural elderly residents.
• Female elderly residents in rural areas are less likely than their urban counterparts to have an active driver's license and/or access to a vehicle.
• Political barriers
• Organizational barriers
• Funding barriers
• Administrative barriers
• Geographic barriers

The reality of differential needs and issues facing the rural elderly population, as well as the differences in rural areas themselves, suggests the need to explore possible alternative transportation systems, in order to have a variety of malleable solutions that are applicable to an array of transportation problems. In the midst of recent amalgamation strategies, rural areas have been included as parts of larger cities making it more difficult for the rural voice to be heard.

What are we doing about Rural Transportation at the Policy Level?

There is continuous debate over the appropriate division of responsibility to meet transportation needs (public versus private and different levels within each one). However, the need to provide transportation services is widely recognized. Funding provided for transportation programs in Ontario include the ministries of: Health, Transportation, Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, Education and Training and, Community and Social Services.

Provincial funding has enabled non-profit agencies to provide various forms of transportation services for their specific clientele. This has caused duplication as well as gaps in transportation services.

How might we do better at the Policy Level?

The fragmentation of transportation service provision through public, private and not-for-profit agencies, creates "silos" where the needs of certain target groups are met, but which leaves individuals without access to these services. This may be because these individuals do not meet the required criteria. Service provision fragmentation also results from similar programs competing for the same limited transportation resources. These problems could be ameliorated through the following:

• Government ministries could operate transportation programs in cohesion with each other to alleviate funding problems
• Attention must be given to improving community transportation systems, especially in rural areas
• Developing stronger incentives for integrating transportation planning at every level, especially if groups are working toward multi-sector coordination

What are we doing at the Community Level?

Approximately 25 rural communities participated in an inter-ministerial Ontario provincial initiative, Community Transportation Action Program (CTAP - 1998-2000). These communities have all attempted to coordinate existing transportation resources, and some continue to do so.

In response to the continuing need for new and expanded transportation services, numerous community-based transportation projects have responses to the need for transportation services for sub-groups of the rural population, including the elderly and persons with disabilities. Many small-scale projects and programs have been organized by community clubs, churches, and local volunteers. These "micro" programs often operate separately from government funded programs.

How might we do better at the Community Level?

Service agencies could implement or strengthen coordination strategies. The majority of existing transportation services in rural areas are specifically geared toward special populations, such as elderly and disabled individuals, thus providing the opportinity for independent living. This typically narrow focus of transportation services creates undesired results in rural areas of Ontario, especially during times of limited public funding for the provision of accessible transportation. The resulting gaps, as well as the overlap of services, prompts the need to consider coordination efforts.

It is commonly felt that coordination may be the key to overcoming mobility issues for rural residents. The potential benefits of coordination have been well documented and are outlined in the following table.

Coordination Benefits Indicated in the Literature

Source: Adapted from Rogers & Whetten, Inter-organizational Coordination, Iowa State University Press, 1982

Coordination of multi-sector transportation services could lead to more effective transportation services when transportation resources (programs, volunteers, vehicles, staff and funding) are available. However, there are many different types of "rural" and various levels of coordination. It is important to realize that one coordination strategy does not provide all of the answers. One has to be mindful that coordination efforts must be structured and adjusted to fit each unique rural area.

Another caution to consider when moving toward coordination of rural transportation services is the already existing multi-stakeholder involvement in transportation services. In order to fill in the gaps, many transportation projects have been implemented at the cost of volunteer time in planning as well as service provision. Therefore, any coordinated effort must be approached from several angles to honor those groups (individuals, senior's councils, agencies, organizations, etc.) that have committed themselves to improving mobility conditions for residents of rural areas.

In recent years, there has been a concentration on community economic development, quality of life, supportive housing, school restructuring and health-care provision in rural areas. All of these issues are imperative to rural life. However, one common thread winding throughout them all is the ability for all rural residents to be mobile.

Discussion

Generally, most issues are the same after 30 years of experience with rural elderly and transportation. There is, although, a myriad organizations that can be involved in transportation services at the community level.

Discussion points

• There are still significant differences between rural areas (i.e. remote, northern, etc.)
• In terms of attitudes and preferences most elderly people prefer informal use of transportation, but this is not an option for everybody.
• Transportation providers have been managing services for a long time and are not necessarily going to change their practices and attitudes
• There have been cutbacks to funding.
• The role of the third sector has increased over time.
• There were gender differences in the 70s and 80s when many women did not have as much access to a vehicle or a license compared to their urban counterparts and rural men.
• Special populations are combined in with the literature on the elderly because there is often a lot of overlap in service provision, and in social policy development.

Other points of discussion included:

• The elderly are accumulating in rural areas (up to 30% of rural population is over 65 years old) but once they attain age 75, they tend to move closer to where the hospitals are. We will see a rising population of young elderly over the next several years.
• Critical mass is always an issue.
• Community-based initiatives try to fill a gap, but they are many and there should be more coordination.
• Elderly people can't always depend on families to help them because families are more mobile than ever before. Younger people often move away for job and housing opportunities. The consequence of this is that elderly parents might move to where their children are.
• Social support is key to sustaining the frail elderly at home in rural areas.
• In Quebec, co-ops have been attempted, but have not always been successful. Nonetheless, co-op services are underutilized.
• A web site is currently being designed in Nova Scotia as a pilot project to coordinate transportation services.
• The private sector has a role and needs to jump in (i.e. shuttle services in Atlantic Canada). However, it has to be viable for them. There is an opportunity for business as people reaching retirement age move to rural communities.
• The rural elderly do have some money to spend on services. But, it does become a situation where it is the little guy against the big companies to deliver services (however, larger companies are finding it less viable to service rural and remote areas and are cutting service).
• A comprehensive view to rural transportation is key. Currently services operate in silos. What we need is "horizontal thinking".
• Red tape, regulations, and licensing requirements are issues, especially in Ontario. These issues have become barriers to service delivery. A key role for government will be to change policies around them.

C. SCAN THREE: RURAL ROADS
By: Todd Gordon

Introduction

Recent secondary research and anecdotal information has suggested that local rural roads in Ontario have been experiencing decline and deterioration. This document presents the findings of an environmental scan of the current state of affairs with respect to Ontario's rural road and an overview of the issues facing both rural road users and the municipal governments that provided road services. Employing a scanning methodology, this study has taken a broad look at issues, largely from the perspective of the stakeholders, with the purpose of providing an updated overview for stimulating policy discussion and further research.

Scan: Report on Rural Roads - Todd Gordon

In spite of economic and social change resulting from such phenomena as globalization and the transition to the age of information, road transportation remains as important as ever to rural Ontario. However, provincial-municipal realignment in the province, along with economic and demographic change, has resulted in stress on the ability of rural municipalities to provide adequate road service. From the scan, it is evident that the demands placed on many rural roads have significantly increased. In general, one can identify several trends that are having an impact on rural roads. These include the following:

Demand Trends

1. Agricultural activity in rural Ontario is changing. The nature of the province's agricultural activity is evolving. Ontario agriculture is increasingly exposed to competitive pressures from around the world. Evolution in production may be resulting in even greater agricultural use of rural roads as the flow of inputs and outputs grows and diversifies.
2. The province is also witnessing increased demand for rural tourism and recreation activities. This demand is, in part, resulting from the demographic shift: the aging baby-boomer population represents a significant component of the population and one with relative wealth and abundant leisure time.
3. There has been increased niche manufacturing activity in rural Ontario, and the potential for more. Together, this evolving economic activity has tended to increase the burden on the existing rural road network. An efficient and safe rural road system is vital for the success of all rural economic activity.
4. Many parts of Ontario have witnessed increased traffic on the rural road network from commuting and from the pursuit of the routine activities of a more diverse rural population. Road-related problems associated with the urban-rural fringe may be expanding further into the countryside as workers commute further distances and the transportation patterns associated with modern life become more complex.

Supply Trends

1. The realignment of provincial-municipal service responsibilities resulted in the province withdrawing direct subsidies for local roads. Municipalities are now completely dependent on the local property tax base to generate funding for rural road maintenance. Funding for roads is a major issue and rural municipalities are struggling to finance their infrastructure requirements.
2. The new municipal act and increased municipal responsibility for road maintenance have resulted in the development of new voluntary standards for local road maintenance.
3. Increased responsibility, reduced funding options and the continuing importance of providing road services has resulted in the increasing use of performance measurement within municipalities.
4. Rural municipalities do not appear to have access to the range of funding and management options available to their urban counterparts and to senior levels of government.

This report outlines a number of significant issues and challenges currently facing rural roads in Ontario. The report then provides analysis of a survey conducted to generate more insight into the nature and extent of these issues and challenges. Following the survey analysis, the report provides some context for the rural road situation in Ontario by examining the characteristics and condition of rural roads in other Canadian provinces and selected American states.

Initial research focussed on two groups that represent road users in Ontario. These groups include, but are not limited to, the following organizations:

• The Ontario Good Roads Association (OGRA)
• The Association of Ontario Road Superintendents (AORS)
• The Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA)
• The Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA)
• The Ontario Trucking Association (OTA)
• The Canadian Automobile Association of Ontario (CAA-Ontario)
• The Municipal Engineers Association (MEA)
• The Ontario Motor Coach Association (OMCA)

Some of these stakeholder groups were contacted directly. Most have produced a variety of documents outlining and discussing their perceptions of road-related issues in Ontario, including issues that bear directly on Ontario's rural roads. These issues include concern with respect to:

• Deteriorating rural roads condition
• Inadequate rural road maintenance
• Deteriorating bridge conditions
• Inadequate bridge maintenance and replacement programs
• A variety of rural road safety issues

This primary and secondary information from the stakeholder groups formed the basis of the questions asked at the mail-out survey. Surveys were tailored to specific groups by asking economic questions specific to each group, and by making minor adjustments in the way other topic questions were worded. However, all surveys attempted to garner the same overall type of information regarding Ontario's rural roads. The initial groups included:

• Municipalities
• Municipal Associations
• Agriculture and Agribusiness
• Tourism
• Economic Development
• Other rural industries

Survey response varied between the groups, but was good overall at approximately 28%. Municipal response was the strongest and, understandability, perhaps the most informative regarding the current state of rural roads and issues from the municipal perspective. There was also a high degree of similarity in terms of the issues identified across all the survey groups, although there was some variation in the prioritization of issues. In general, major survey findings include the following:

1. Ontario's rural roads are under pressure and deteriorating.
2. All user groups suggested that more should be done to improve rural roads or at least prevent further deterioration.
3. Municipalities are struggling to maintain and improve rural roads. Many are deferring major capital projects and feel forced to neglect or minimize some maintenance activities.
4. Many of Ontario's rural bridges are in an advanced stage of deterioration. Inadequate bridges may pose the single greatest threat to the economic viability of some rural areas over the long-term.
5. Most respondents specifically identified the need for some type of rural bridge reconstruction program.
6. All of the survey groups strongly recommended dedicating a portion of provincial fuel tax revenue to the maintenance of rural roads. Failing this dedication, respondents suggested that some other form of stable funding is necessary to allow municipalities to adequately maintain the rural roads in the province.
7. Municipal response to the transfer of former provincial highways to municipal responsibility was neutral overall. Most municipal respondents did not object to the transfers in principle. However, many were dissatisfied with compensation, the condition of transferred segments and, in some cases, the criteria used for making the transfers.
8. Respondents in all groups identified a wide range of safety concerns on rural roads, including the following:
   • Excessive speed
   • Drivers not adjusting their driving habits to rural road conditions
   • Poor surface conditions
   • Narrow lane widths and narrow shoulders
   • Poor visibility and inadequate sight lines, particularly at intersections
   • Poor design geometry
   • Conflicting use (i.e. autos, trucks, farm machinery, etc.)
   • Inadequate winter maintenance
9. Many road user groups expressed concern regarding increased truck traffic on rural roads, both from a safety perspective, and from the perspective of the uncompensated damage large trucks cause. As with most issues, the trucking issue is more complicated than meets the eye. First, the public perception of trucks as inherently unsafe may be distorted. Second, commercial vehicles pay as much, if not more, in user fees to the provincial government. Again, the issue may be one of directing some of those user fee revenues to the maintenance of rural roads, thus offsetting some of the lack of compensation for road wear and tear.
10. Municipal respondents identified a wide array of innovative practices employed, in part, in an effort to ameliorate funding pressures. Most of these were technical innovations used in actual maintenance and construction activities. However, some practices are directly towards improving administration and management, these include such things as road management software.
11. Most of the respondents across all survey groups indicated that they thought that the current state of Ontario's rural roads is having a negative impact on many industrial sectors.

The study also includes an overview of the rural road situation in the other Canadian provinces and in selected American states. This comparative analysis included an examination of a number of economic, demographic, and road network characteristics for each of the jurisdictions. These characteristics were included to identify similarities and differences between the jurisdictions that potentially bear on the current state of affairs beyond funding and specific issues.

One dominant characteristic shared by all the Canadian provinces is that most have gone, or are undergoing, municipal restructuring and realignment in provincial-municipal responsibilities. Beyond the experience of some form of change, there appears to be considerable difference among the provinces with respect to what is changing and how these changes affect rural roads. In Alberta for example, there has been change in the responsibility for some roads. Unlike Ontario, realigned responsibilities have resulted in the province taking on responsibility for certain county roads rather than transfers of provincial highways to municipalities.

Another common theme across the country is the belief that federal and provincial fuel tax revenue must be invested in roads at all levels of jurisdiction. This is true even in the provinces where there is less evidence of widespread concern regarding the state of rural roads.

It is in the western provinces, particularly Saskatchewan, where the rural road situation may be approaching the level of concern evident in Ontario. Again, there are complex reasons for this situation, but a major factor is the increase in rural road use resulting from federal transportation policy with respect to the movement of grain. The removal of the significant grain transportation subsidy has resulted in abandonment of rail lines and the consolidation and rationalization of the operation of major railways. Consequently, more grain is moving by truck and much of that movement is occurring on rural roads. In Saskatchewan, this change is accompanied by the depopulation of rural areas. This phenomena is occurring in part because of the relative instability experienced in agriculture for the past number of years.

In contrast, the Atlantic Provinces appear to be relatively quiet when it comes to rural roads. The exact reasons for this are not clear, although it appears that the provincial governments are more directly involved in rural roads and this may have created relative stability. In addition, these provinces have relatively small road networks (with the exception of Newfoundland).

Findings from the comparative scan of selected American states were somewhat different. The states used for comparison were selected based on a number of characteristics, including the following:

• Availability of relevant information.
• Relative proximity to Ontario.
• Similarity in climatic conditions⁽³⁾.
• Similarity in topography.
• Size and proportion of rural settlements and perceived relative "rurality".
• Relative importance of agriculture and/or forestry and/or mining, thus relative importance of the primary industries.
• Relative importance of tourism activities in rural areas.
• Relative importance of rural manufacturing activities.
• Degree of similarity of trends in all of the above, including demographics.

Based on the above criteria, the following states were chosen for analysis:

1. Minnesota
2. Wisconsin
3. Michigan
4. Ohio
5. Pennsylvania
6. New York

Rural roads in many of the states face similar pressures to those in southern Ontario. However, the rural road situation in the United States differs significantly from that in Ontario for several reasons. First, it appears that state investment in road transportation is generally higher than in Ontario. Second, there is significant federal investment and involvement in road transportation generally. Although the federal government makes little or no direct investment in local roads, the strong support of state transportation activity indirectly aids local roads. Finally, there appears to be much greater cooperation between all levels of government with respect to road transportation. For example, the federal government plays a significant role in information management and technology transfer, and the state and local governments cooperate significantly in planning activities, both land-use and transportation.

Despite the positive attributes mentioned above, there are rural road issues in the selected states. Minnesota in particular appears to be suffering some agricultural transportation issues faced by the seven western provinces. There is also evidence that rural roads and bridges have experienced deterioration in the recent past. The situation appears to have been ameliorated by a recent resurgence of interest in transportation infrastructure at the federal level. Again, the influence on rural roads is likely indirect, but it would appear that road and bridge decline at all levels has been slowed and may even have been reversed. This is in stark contrast to the situation in Ontario, where, if the survey results are indicative, the rural road situation is still in decline and the principle stakeholders have yet to find a way to significantly improve the situation.

The final section of the report is a brief look at the role of innovation in preventing or ameliorating rural road deterioration. The survey responses revealed a number of innovative ways in which municipalities are using innovative practices to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their maintenance and upgrading activities. However, there are a number of limitations in the application of innovation s to rural road management. One is the fact that innovation in itself requires significant investment to implement. In addition, the results of the implementation of an innovative practice may take years to assess. Finally, innovation is not a perfect substitute for adequate funding. Effective maintenance of Ontario's rural road network will require substantial and stable funding regardless of the level and type of innovative practices that municipalities are able to employ.

Discussion

The Scan was premised on the assumption that increased pressure on rural roads was occurring. It was demonstrated that increased economic activity leads to increased volume on the roads, increased wear and tear, higher costs, more maintenance required, and an increased need for innovative ways to deal with rural transportation issues. Costs of having larger trucks on the road due to an increase in manufacturing and costs for commuting either for work, tourism or recreation becomes a central issue for rural road maintenance

This part of the presentation underlines the fact that rural roads are more important than ever before and that of inadequate funding. It was also noted that municipalities are concerned about the broader road issues: maintenance, costs/funding, and the future needs of rural roads.

Other points of discussion included:

• Is there an impending crisis?
• How do we sustain the diversified economy? Is transportation the key?
• There is inadequate funding combined with unawareness about rural roads.
• In the diversified economy there is an increased level of knowledge-based businesses emerging. However, as the knowledge-based economy grows so will the need for roads. In the end you have to move product from point A to point B.
• We have over-extended and over-stretched a transportation system that is inadequately funded.
• Decisions around transportation have been political over time. One kilometer of good highway costs $1 million. Is this the best investment of taxpayers' money? There is the view that investment would be better off in areas like skills training and skills development, because, in the long run, road maintenance is really expensive.
• The best policy would be to revert to gravel!
• Transportation is not just about people, but also about goods.
• There is also an environmental cost to rural roads and transportation that is an externality that should be addressed.
• Railways are underutilized and on the decline.
• Rationalization is one approach. One needs a certain level of traffic to justify investment, but that also has to be balanced with political and economic benefits. Shortline railroads are an option.
• One large growth sector is trucking (new rural jobs in driving).
• There is a debate in the prairies about maintaining the road system that is already there. Grain elevators in the southern part of the prairies were located according to the old horse and buggy system with each elevator being 8 miles apart. This is outdated so some elevators are closing. That plus the fact that increased technology has decreased the need for roads raises the question: where should the roads be? The roads that are used the most should be maintained and all other roads should feed into those main corridors (North - South?).
• Overweight trucks are a burden on roads that are not designed for it. This continues to be an issue because there is no enforcement of the rules.
• It is important to share information on these issues - what are the strategies used in various regions/sectors?
• People really don't appreciate how much money roads cost.
• What about subsidization? Is that good economics? How do we assess social/political/sustainability/economic costs? How are decisions made? For example, proposed tolls from Moncton to Fredericton could cost politicians their jobs.
• There should be a focus on maintaining and rationalizing. But, is bigger better?

D. SCAN FOUR: COMMUNITY-BASED RESPONSES TO RURAL TRANSPORTATION ISSUES IN ONTARIO: A Review of the Ontario Community Transportation Action Program (CTAP), 1998-2000
By: Professor Tony Fuller

In almost all discussions of issues in Rural Ontario, the problematic nature of community transportation is repeatedly interwoven, no matter what the topic is. Transportation has been recognized as a pressing issue related to municipal restructuring, family violence, school closures, and health-care restructuring, to name a few. Because of the ubiquitous nature of rural transport as a rural issue, it was decided that exploratory research was necessary to determine what policy, and community planning, actions might be taken to improve community transportation services in rural areas.

This report is focussed on the first two years of research and is limited to an assessment of the Community Transportation Access Program (CTAP), a multi-sectoral initiative of the Government of Ontario, 1996 to 1999. It is focussed on community involvement in CTAP.

The objective of the study were as follows:

1. To assess the rural transportation problem in Ontario by means of a comparative literature review;
2. To determine, by means of evaluation techniques, the effectiveness of government programs in promoting rural transportation in Ontario;
3. To examine cases of locally based transportation systems in rural Ontario for lessons learned and useful ideas; and,
4. To describe a set of models of community-based transportation systems for potential use in rural Ontario. A triangulation approach to research was used in order to fulfill the objectives of the first two years of the project.

The methodology used is divided into three parts:

1. A synthesis of information from previous research relating to automobile access, social service coordination, and rural transportation policy;
2. A review of policies and programs that encourage the development of community-based transportation projects; and,
3. A case study review for detailed community analysis.

The literature is not devoid of evidence suggesting that rural transportation is a serious issue for many rural residents especially elderly and young people, and individuals with physical disabilities. Rural transportation may be new in regards to rural youth, but it has long been established as an issue for rural people in general.

The provision of transportation services on the other hand is much more fragmented and uneven. According to the literature, in the absence of public transportation and the prohibitive cost of taxis in many rural areas, more services and the coordination of existing services is needed.

The Community Transportation Action Program (CTAP) in rural Ontario (1996-1999) was used as an example of a government-funded program encouraging the development of community-based transportation projects. CTAP was devised and supported by the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Education and Training, the Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, the Ministry of Community and Social Services, and the Ministry of Health in Ontario.

From the review of 14 rural communities funded by CTAP, three forms of transportation coordination in rural areas became evident. The categories that have been developed are flexible and general in nature reflecting the uniqueness of each rural community and available transportation resource base. The three types of transportation projects include:

1. Urban centralized - high resource
2. Rural centralized - low resource
3. Rural dispersed

Case studies provided examples of models of coordination at each of the three levels and outlined self-prescribed improvements and successful steps.

The three types of models identified can be useful to communities and organizations wishing to explore methods of coordinating transportation systems, or creating a project that suits the needs and resource base in their area. Useful information has been gathered in terms of what approaches could lead to an improvement to lives of the transportation disadvantaged people living in rural areas.

Several recommendations were made relating to information sharing, policy development, and future programming for rural transportation initiatives.

Discussion

This program was about ensuring a cost effective and coordinated effort at the local level involving a lead ministry, service clubs, municipalities, the private sector and the health sector. Many jurisdictions were already providing very narrowly defined programs. Therefore, partnerships were formed at the provincial and local levels to coordinate services.

There are often boundary and jurisdiction issues for service providers. This is especially prevalent in rural areas, where services are criteria based. The CTAP attempted to address these issues by contributing $2 million to coordination efforts by providing direction, advice and seed money to the community level (to undertake an inventory of services, a coordination plan and evidence of partnership formation). Fifty-six rural communities participated.

After 2 years of existence, the program ended. Solutions from the top level were few and far between. Two of the 5 ministries ended up dormant.

Other points of discussion included:

• Shared travel is an issue because you are with people you don't know, people have different travel needs and locations to go to, there are insurance problems, and as a result services are not used as much as expected. This produces a "critical mass" problem, especially for the private sector.
• The way that most programs are designed is that they don't build in transportation costs into their budget and funding requirements. This is an issue when programs have to depend on other transportation services that are not necessarily designed to meet the needs of the clientele (i.e. mental health).
• There needs to be co-ordination of empty seats and a way to pay for it. People have always relied on the transportation provider to come up with the funding for travellers. This is not an effective use of transportation provider's time. Organisations have to take responsibility and pitch in money towards transportation costs.
• Duplication has to be eliminated. Would agencies consider putting money into a big community pot?
• Programs and services are great in rural areas (i.e. day programs) but there is a lack of transportation services. This poses a problem for the person with a disability who has to get to their sheltered workshop or day program.
• Even if two agencies come to the table to discuss these issues, it would be considered a success.
• What is considered success at the provincial level is completely different than what is considered to be successful at the community level. The outputs and effects at both levels need to be looked at and recognised as separate.
• In Nova Scotia there is a federal initiative to get a website running that provides information on accessible transportation across Canada. This is available at the local and inter-location levels.
• There needs to be synergy.
• Need to look at the Rural and Remote cluster, what models exist?
• There are lots of issues but not many solutions. Accessibility is key.

It was generally noted that there is an apparent contradiction of trends that contributes to a lack of improvement. For example, centralization of federal and provincial services is ongoing while decentralization of municipal responsibilities is also prevalent. Both trends tend to disadvantage those young and older/disabled Canadians without direct access to automotive transport.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS FROM
FOUR RURALTRANSPORTATION REPORTS, 1999-2001
Professor Tony Fuller, Marni Herold, Todd Gordon, Kathleen Kaye, and Emily Brockie University of Guelph, January 2002

From the four environmental scans on rural transportation in Ontario and from two comparisons with border-states in the USA, a number of general observations can be made for policy consideration:

1. Transportation Disadvantaged People

There has been very little improvement in the experience of those without direct access to automotive transport in the more than 30 years since the issue of transportation disadvantage first came to light.

2. Socio-Political Trends

There is an apparent contradiction of trends that contributes to this lack of improvement.

Centralization of federal and provincial services is ongoing while a decentralization of municipal powers is also prevalent.

Both trends tend to disadvantage those young and older/disabled Canadians without direct access to automotive transportation. People have further to go to get to essential services, and local authorities have few resources to assist with local transportation schemes.

3. Out-Migration of Rural Youth

One of the reasons reported by young people as to why youth leave rural areas is that they "they can't get around."

4. Rural roads are becoming increasingly important to the maintenance of the rural economy as railroads decline and business start-ups increase across many rural areas. Farm economies, rural tourism and resource industries are particularly dependent on rural roads in Canada. Investment in rural roads has not kept pace with the importance of the rural economy: rural transportation is Canada's forgotten issue.

5. Rural transportation programs that effectively co-ordinate and mobilize existing resources at the local level are inexpensive and easy to run.

6. Multi-stakeholder partnerships, both horizontal and vertical, are at the heart of successful efforts to improve transportation provision.

Conclusion:

"Rural transportation is Canada's forgotten issue"

A holistic approach to the rural economy requires that transportation be accounted for. While local choice is important, decisions ultimately have to fit into provincial regulations. Local communities need to be empowered to make choices and develop local services.

People often don't see the connection between their tax money and the road that appears at the end of their street. The public needs to be more aware of the logistics in road building/maintenance (i.e. cost, decision-making processes, etc.).

At what scale does it matter? At what level should local government take responsibility? Resources have to be available to local government to match the responsibility. But transportation issues also has to go beyond the local community because it connects people and goods to other areas:

• One of the overall issues for rural has been fragmentation.
• Transparency is needed. What are the real costs?
• Sustainability is another big issue. How will rural communities deal with escalating transportation costs in the future?
• Planning and land-use issues are also key: low density, severance for retirement lots, in-filling, large livestock facilities, etc. are all important issues to look at.

5. Think Tank Five: Agriculture and Rural Development: Crossing the Divide

Overview:

AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT: CROSSING THE DIVIDE
Professor Tony Fuller
University of Guelph

Crossing the divide between rural development and agriculture means bringing together the two separate parts to examine their relationships in the current context of globalization and community development.

Originally the two components were seen as one. Primary production was the "raison d'être" of settlement policy in Canada where farms, villages and towns were established to support the cultivation of the land, the extraction of minerals, the harvesting of trees or the landing of fish. The "staples economy" which subsequently developed saw the rural system as subservient to primary production, which generated wealth through the export of primary products. "What was good for the primary sector was good for the community". Over time this unitary relationship became strained as technology enabled production to rise and employment in the primary sectors to fall, thus weakening the link between town and country. In the recent past, this de-linking was made more absolute in terms of policy to allow attention to be paid to the primary sectors while beginning to address the somewhat different needs of the rural (non agricultural) population.

Agriculture demonstrates the interdependencies and changes over time between production and the settlement system, having moved from total interdependence to relative independence in many parts of Canada. It is no longer useful to suggest that "agricultural policy is good rural policy" as towns and villages depend less and less on the agricultural economy for their upkeep. The term "service centre", meaning that small towns service the surrounding agriculture, also has little relevance today. Changes in the structure of agriculture, farming technology and farm business practices reduce the number of interactions that are strictly local. Although there are new links between agriculture and the local economy, as Cummings et al point out, the essential relationship between agricultural and rural has changed.

Re-figuring the current and future relationship between rural and agricultural development is the subject of the fifth Think Tank. It is proposed to hear and to discuss different perspectives on how this relationship can be "re-constructed". It is proposed that "rural" be seen as the leading component in the relationship to bring fresh thinking and a challenge to the debate. It might be posited for example that agriculture is now part of the rural economy. If so, then what are the positive and negative aspects of this new relationship? Is rural about to inherit some of the fall-out of the animal health and waste-management issues that currently affect agriculture? (Witness the impact of Foot and Mouth disease on rural tourism in the UK). Can rural capture some of the benefits of the life sciences economy that are on the horizon? However one may construct the economic relationships between rural and agriculture the social links between the two are still very real, be they the contributions that farm families make to the volunteer base, the civil society structures or to local governance.

One perspective that will be put on the table at Think Tank five will be that of "land". In the changing relationship between rural and agriculture, land is a constant. Land and water are two of the essential components of agriculture, while at the same time they are the dominant components of the rural landscape and have great value for tourism, retirement and cottaging, in themselves also multi-million dollar economies. Furthermore, as most of the agricultural production comes from less than 20% of the farms (and farmland?), then the majority of agro-rural land is in the hands of landowners whose prime purpose may not be intensive agriculture.

Rural has legitimate interest in both sorts of land holding; to accommodate production agriculture on the one hand, and to encourage the economic and social use of other lands in an environmentally compatible way, on the other. Such arguments may challenge the conventional wisdom of policy makers and the rights of property owners, but are worth considering. It is in this light that the land can be seen as the medium through which contestations in the countryside, and their resolution, could take place. Land use then becomes the focus of the issue as rural land can be used for several purposes. Some of these are private (i.e., a commercial recreational enterprises) and some can be considered public (ecological land trusts). It is conceivable that in this light, land-use policy could be re-invigorated as an instrument of public policy. Also in this construction, many farm families might be able to engage in multifunctional agriculture, contributing to food production as well as to rural amenities such as landscape conservation, agro-tourism and other green land-base enterprises.

In this one perspective, rural and agriculture are re-combined to produce both public and private goods that will continue to generate wealth while sustaining the natural and human resource base of rural Canada.

Summary of discussion:

At one time, most of Rural Canada was designed and laid out to serve the interests of the primary sector (agriculture, forestry, mining and fishing) and there was a form of unity in the countryside. The staples economy affected the activities of most people and locally there was a singular reliance on one place as the main focus of commercial and social activity. Over time this unity broke down as industrialism developed in rural Canada and labour market activities became diversified. Towns that were once called "service centres" developed their own economies and as the proportion of farm families declined in relation to rural residents, a gap appeared between the farm and rural segments of the population. It became recognized that the interests of farming were not necessarily the interests of rural people.

A second component of the Introduction was the suggested connection made between the two communities that depends on the common interest in land. Many families that occupy land do not farm it in a commercial sense and much of the rural landscape in some parts of Canada is under low or non farm interests.

Question: If 80% of the value of farm produce comes from only 20% of the farmers, then how much land is used to produce this dominant proportion? Is it as little as 30 - 40 %?

A good discussion arose out of this proposition and it was concluded that research needs to be undertaken to establish what proportion of land (per region) is actively used to produce the bulk, in terms of value, of Canada's primary production.

The other main point of discussion was around the observation that if 80% of the land owners are not part of the "productivist" farm group, then what sort of programs and inducements exist to help such people maintain their livelihoods in such a way that they use the land in a sustainable fashion. Ideas around "green" production, land-based tourism and heritage were counterbalanced by the problems brought about by newcomers to farming areas, etc.

It was felt however, that rural development has a legitimate interest in land and as such can be of value in the public goods debate.

EXPLORING THE DIVIDE IN EUROPE - Dr John Bryden (University of Aberdeen)

Multifunctionality, Agriculture and Rural Development:
A European Perspective
John Bryden⁽²⁾

Introduction

What I want to argue today is that multifunctionality is a rural development issue, and not an agricultural one. I will further argue that most of the key issues of multifunctionality should be part of a territorial, or place-based, rural policy framework, and totally separate from sectoral agricultural policy. However, I shall also argue that, so far at least, Multifunctionality has been "captured" by the farming lobby and agricultural policy. The question is how might this change?

Multifunctional Agriculture and EU Policy Presentation

Discussion:

The discussion arising from the European case focussed on the "multifunctionality" debate. The alliance between European farmers and the environmentalists to bring forward support for the multi-functionality program of the EU, was not seen by John Bryden as helpful to the needs of rural development in Europe. This raised a number of points of clarification and issue. To many, this critique of multifunctionality was a surprise, but was not unwelcome.

The remaining discussion centered on the EU agro-rural programs that were "place-based". For example, mention of the European LEADER program, led to some questions about the Community Futures program in Canada and the view that place-based development was also being effectively undertaken in Canada. It was pointed out that the cost of multifunctionality and LEADER in Europe was minute compared to the support costs for agriculture.

Conclusion:

The Think Tank concluded that rural development was better off if not included with agriculture at WTO, etc. It was also felt that land-based interaction between rural development and farming would be very difficult to separate at the policy and program level. The issue of crossing the divide between agriculture and rural development is an important debate and it should be continued.

6. Think Tank Six: Putting "Community" back into Community Colleges

Overview:

Professor Tony Fuller
University of Guelph

Community development in rural Canada is having a revival. There is renewed interest in the well being of rural places and especially in the means of sustaining and building on rural assets in an era of globalization. Much of this interest is focused on community capacity building and community economic development, the two contemporary approaches to achieving the development of Canadian rural communities.

The objective of the sixth Think Tank was to review what are the common elements (core competencies) of contemporary rural community development, whatever the approach, and to question whether/how community colleges are currently equipped and orientated to respond to this opportunity.

Community development in the rural context may be one way to put "community" back into the college system. This is not to suggest that "community" is not already present in most college operations, but this focus on the core competencies needed for community capacity building or community economic development, will pose the question of whether the colleges could do more and be a major factor in the sustaining of rural places.

Summary of discussion:

Lynden Johnson (Association of Canadian Community Colleges) introduced the subject of the Think Tank by outlining his own thoughts and questions on the subject of community development: the meaning of words, the three C's (community, capacity, and core competencies), why the imperative has to be always "economic", and what institutions can/should do to ensure better futures for rural communities in Canada.

Tony Fuller affirmed the purpose of the Think Tank by encouraging people to "let a thousand flowers bloom" by asking questions and offering creative ideas. For the purpose of this discussion, three points were made:

1. Community development is a place-based concept (towns, villages, countryside).
2. Development is the process by which communities change and grow. Development can take many forms and is not normative. Development is a process.
3. The Canadian experience in community development is rich and varied…from Coady to New Dawn to Community Futures.

The state is involved in community development (CD) and has come to recognize the value of the "bottom up approach". However, this presents a classical paradox. How does the state intervene in such a way as to encourage endogenous growth? Perhaps indirectly through such instruments such as community colleges or directly through such programs as Community Futures?

Currently there are two approaches to community development that form the mainstream of practice in rural Canada: Community Economic Development (CED); and Community Capacity Building (CCB). David Douglas (University of Guelph) was invited to address these mainstream approaches so as to identify the general and common principles. The intention following his presentation was to discuss "core competencies" that are fundamental to these CD principles. With these core competencies in mind, the Think Tank would then consider how the colleges are currently addressing these CD needs and opportunities.

PRESENTATION - David Douglas (University of Guelph)

CORE COMPETENCIES - Carolyn Pletsch (General Manager, Ontario Agricultural Training Institute)

This presentation on core competencies focussed on the individual as being key to the process because individual capacity and knowledge is essential for community learning to occur.

1. Communication:
   • Accountability - transparency
   • Enabling - facilitating
   • Understanding the issue, frame the problem, "be at the table" and penetrate the community system.
2. Mobilizing Innovation and Change:
   • First stage of capacity building
   • Strategy
   • Advocacy
   • Determine what matters and who matters.
3. Managing Self:
   • Cognitive and analytical ability
   • Seeing choices and ascertaining feasibility
   • Making choices.
4. Managing People and staff:
   • Participative
   • Determining appropriate fit - integrated
   • Ability to marshal resources and make decisions
   • Manage consequences.

INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMNET (CD) ROLES WITHIN

COMMUNITY COLLEGES - Lynden Johnson (Association of Canadian Community Colleges) and Professor Tony Fuller

It is very difficult to put core competencies (CC) into a model that addresses the complexities of community (as an inanimate object) and the individual, at any level. The question is how CC gets acted out (beyond the two dimensional theoretical level) and how a curriculum in community colleges and institutions in general can facilitate CD.

Is CD a collective of all the various skills and activities that exist in a community or is it something that is deliberately taught (intentional intervention vs. aggregate effect)? For example, there may be a transfer of individual skills to the public (community as a whole) via training for positions on a community board (the aggregate or evolutionary approach).

On the other hand, a community may have a "college trained" CD person who attempts to coordinate and mobilize around development issues (intentional). The stance taken will require different core competencies.

Curriculum should focus on the reciprocal relationship between the student and her/his community. Community colleges do try to incorporate this into their programs. This is like the mandatory 30 hours of community service, as a volunteer, that Ontario high school students have to do to graduate. Students learn about how their communities work and about the ethic of volunteering.

Question: What do Community Colleges offer via their curriculum and community relations and are these linked in any systematic (purposeful) way to the core competencies required for CD? What are the gaps and what is working?

THE COLLEGE RESPONSE

Barbara Brolin, the Principal at Sir Sanford Fleming College in Haliburton, spoke about the activities and values in which her college is involved in:

• Community involvement is key. Growth cannot occur without the support of the community. Colleges have a lasting relationship with the communities they are located in.
• Visioning is important. For example, 9 years ago Barb had a vision of Haliburton as an arts community. There are now an arts committee in the county, a sculpture trail, and 4600 registrants in the college.
• The college took over many of the roles that HRDC had played in the past (HRDC now contracts out to the college) so there is a centralized office located within the college.
• Leadership is key, both from the college itself and also as a skill for its students. The college makes itself part of the community by donating space and resources (i.e. for conferences), getting its name out there as much as possible, being on as many boards and committees as possible, using various media to promote the value of students, and acting as a convenor for the community even though it may not benefit the college directly.
• The reality is that while the college wants to be involved in capacity building overall, the province wants them to become specialized. As courses get more and more narrowly focussed, the less expertise there is to offer the community.
• Responding to government opportunities is difficult so an effort has to be made to make those opportunities fit into your agenda. You have to prove the worth to the community.
• Some good examples of programs that are already using CD are social work (CSW, DSW) and the nurse practitioner programs. George Brown College, for example, has a community development program that is based on urban sub-groups. How can this be transferred to the rural setting?
• The province might have to look at the demand for CD workers and their potential salaries to condone a CD program.

Brian Bender, formerly from Alfred College spoke about an opportunity that came up in his community. Alfred College was able to form a partnership with the Ontario Rural Water Association (OWRA) because of some problems Alfred had been having with their water quality. The OWRA had located in three communities: Guelph, Ottawa, and Alfred. OWRA was able to provide training regarding rural wastewater management to the college. One way this partnership was utilized was through the Alfred Wetlands Program. The college actually manages a wetland wastewater site on behalf of the community as a demonstration site. The college now offers appropriate curriculum around water management and therefore has expertise in that area. However, the community is not really aware of these initiatives so more exposure is needed.

Discussion

It is unfortunate that colleges are not known or funded for applied research. Innovation should be invested in. For the first time we are seeing skills training and learning on the same table, but what sits on the table is generally driven by political considerations. Skills are necessary to conduct innovative research. However, there is a lack of commitment to skills training by the government. This can be illustrated by the absence of funding for apprenticeship programs. The private sector was supposed to take over this role, but 50% of apprentices still do not complete their programs.

The issue is how skills training gets translated to the community level. Is training a public good? The transfer happens most often in the volunteer sector, which is not always recognized. Colleges and their communities integrate very well, but this is not recognized or funded.

Conclusion:

Universities are funded for technological research while community colleges are not. This makes innovation a technological issue, as opposed to a social issue. The innovation issue will be significant down the road, and there will be an increase in social innovation. In today's society we are going to have to move past the technical and business focus of innovation toward "Innovative innovation".

Tony Fuller presented 2 simple views of Community Development (CD). One is the idea of informal CD where the efforts of many citizens from diverse backgrounds with some generic skills training contribute to society in a variety of ways resulting in CD (gradualism or incrementalism). The other is the notion of formal CD, where rural development training results in leaders and external experts who engage communities in intentional CD.

CD is such a complex issue. It is not possible to make conclusions or create a formula. We need to go back to the CC's model and see what differentiation there is. Most intervention occurs in an applied way. What kind of courses address the various competencies?

It would be interesting to meet with the National Association of Community Economic Development Officers and see what they do.

Communities often don't know about the networks that exist. Community colleges could play a critical role in educating local people about networks and resources.

Professor Tony Fuller
University of Guelph

Emerging from the six Think Tanks are three cross-cutting themes, as well as a number of questions for further consideration. Think Tanks rarely produce final conclusions, but if successful generate further debate. The three emergent themes are: rural values; measurement in rural development; and the increasing complexity of rural systems.

Rural Values

Values are deeply held beliefs that reflect the broad underpinnings and social persuasions of society. They are important indicators of what matters to people and are useful measures of "what is important at the time". Values are privately held, but affect the public domain. They can be especially significant for public policy if misunderstood or underestimated. This is because values, by their very nature, are conflictual in the collective sense because they are often contested and may be the subject of social control and public pressure. Also, given that values can vary according to age, gender, location and social environment, they are difficult if not dangerous to generalize. Given this range of complexity surrounding values, it is necessary to question how they should be the subject of policy research and policy debate.

Despite this complexity, values emerged as a consistent topic of interest in the Think Tank series. Values were expressed in asset terms, in relation to sustainable livelihoods and around the renewed interest in "land" as a highly valued component of rural areas. The significant observation to be made is that values are being identified as useful in various policy debates. This emergence - a willingness to include values in research and policy debate - is an important step, a willingness to tackle complexity in many ways.

Finally, it may be observed from the Think Tank discussions that some values are held in common. Many people feel that "rural" has a special value in society, most people value "health" very highly, and "agriculture and the family farm" are still revered as important social values in Canada. At this broad level, values have a combining effect. At the next level down, privately held values are more likely to have a conflictual effect on the rural community. Despite being difficult to measure, values at whatever level are real and important contributors to the complexity of rural life and need to be included in the policy process.

Measurement in Rural Development

"Measurement" is an old debate in rural development. It has long been hampered by low population densities and the general lack of statistics for rural areas. In the context of the Think Tank series, the question of measurement has arisen because of the concern that standard measures of "growth", "performance", "progress" and "development" are too restrictive to capture the true nature of rural conditions and values.

The disenchantment with "poor" measures has been growing for some time and usually manifests itself in the interest shown in qualitative measures of conditions in rural life. As with many other new ideas, much of the impetus has come from the developing world where vital statisics are virtually non-existent and conditions are such that standard measures such as income and material wealth are largely irrelevant in most rural areas. There is much talk of "quality of life", especially in connection to rural life, yet the level of agreement on what this is and how it can be accounted for is very low. How are we to calculate, assess and measure the intangibles of life that we are beginning to admit or realize means so much to large numbers of people? It is in this sense that accounting for such values as "spirituality" will become of increasing importance in western rural community development.

Complexity

The Think Tank series confirmed the growing awareness that rural Canada, unlike its bucolic and simple representation, is in fact very complex. The inextricable and close association of most rural activity with the natural environment means an interface that farmers and others know about, and they largely form the control and management point of view only. Counting assets that include large tracts of natural environment, making a living in rural Canada, getting around in rural areas, and deciding how "land" should be used for public and private purposes are all examples from the Think Tank series of "complex" issues that defy easy assessment, measurement and action. The mixture of public and private issues, the silo-like sectoral nature of government agencies and their multiple layers of jurisdiction, all make dealing with rural issues even more complex. The result is that we deal increasingly with small manageable parts in order to be accountable and show "progress" when in fact our actions often are damaging to the greater whole. The greater "whole" we recognize as complex, such as seeing rural as a complex dynamic system, one that is ever changing and reaching new and unexpected forms, but our ability to cope with complexity is highly limited, especially in policy terms. We prefer abstractions that represent simplicity, when in fact we should learn to take complexity seriously.

A solid first step in this direction is to debate the latest and most interesting ideas, enabling us to imagine what we don't know and to seek answers to policy questions that are not always sweet and simple. Think Tanks are a good way to start. Thinking positively, measuring progress in terms other than GDP, and treating "rural" as a complex and asset-rich whole are three ideas worth further consideration.

¹ In the arena society, the functions of communities are changing and the new activity patterns are little understood. They are complex and superimposed on traditional infrastructure, creating problems for maintenance and identity of responsibilities for cost sharing and upgrading (Fuller, 1994).

² Co-Director, the Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and RUPRI Fellow, 2002, based at the Rural Policy Research Institute, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA.

³ This means at least some similarity to one or more of the multiple broad climatic conditions experienced across the considerable breadth of Ontario .

Appendix one

Think Tank Series: Thinking About Rural Canada
List of Presenters

BENDER, Brian, Senior Project Officer, Rural and Remote Communities Initiative, Association of Canadian Community Colleges, Ottawa, ON

BROCKIE, Emily, Graduate Student, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON

BOLIN, Barbara, Sir Sandford Flemming College, Haliburton, ON

BRYDEN, John, School of Resources, Environment and Society, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom

COLMAN, Ronald, Executive Director, Genuine Progress Indicators - Atlantic, Halifax, NS

COTE, Ethel, College d'Alfred, Alfred, ON

DOUGLAS, David, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON

GORDON, Todd, Consultant, Guelph, ON

HEROLD, Marni, Consultant, Tavistock, ON

JOHNSON, Lynden, Special Advisor, Rural and Remote Communities Initiative, Association of Canadian Community Colleges, Ottawa, ON

KAYE, Kathleen, Project Coordinator, Rural Secretariat, Guelph, ON

McNAMARA, Trish, Focus Consulting

SINGH, Naresh, Senior Advisor, Bureau for Development Policy, United Nations Development Program, New York, NY

PLETSCH, Carolyn, General Manager, Ontario Agricultural Training Institute, Guelph, ON

REGERH, Sheila, Director, National Council of Welfare, Ottawa, ON

ROBERTSON, Mary, The Ontario Rural Council, Guelph, ON

1996 Census of Labour Force Activity, Occupation and Industry. Place of Work, Mode of Transportation to Work, Unpaid Work, the Daily, Statistics Canada, March 17, 1998.
Link: http://dissemination.statcan.ca/Daily/English/980317/d980317.htm#ART1 

Canadian Rural Partnership, Rural Dialogue: Ontario Regional Rural Conference 2001, Towards a Common Shared Rural Agenda in Ontario, North Bay, Ontario - August 26-28 2001.

[ Français | Contact Us | Help | Search | Canada Site ] [ Home | News Releases | Key Rural Initiatives | Site Map | Publications ]