Veteran Alberta Liberal senator Joyce Fairbairn talks about rural poverty as a huge, poignant, disgraceful national secret that is illustrated by the growth of food banks in the heart of farming country.
“It is a huge issue that we haven’t focused on and have not really understood,” she said. “Part of it is our history, proud rural people and pioneers who work hard and survive. Part of it is that the rest of society just doesn’t want to see, turns its eyes away.”
Fairbairn, a former journalist and aide to Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau who was appointed to the Senate in 1984 as a representative of the Lethbridge area, is chair of the Senate agriculture committee that has launched an extensive investigation into rural poverty.
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At the end of January, the committee begins year long hearings across the country aimed at putting a human face on rural poverty.
In mid-December, after months of hearings in Ottawa, it issued an interim report that said rural poverty is widespread, under-researched and under-reported.
It can sometimes be attributed to the farm income crisis, but it has received little political or academic attention.
“The rural poor are in many ways invisible,” said the committee report that made a powerful case for more attention to a political issue. “They don’t beg for change. They don’t congregate in downtown cores. They don’t line up at homeless shelters because with few exceptions, there are none.”
Fairbairn said the hundreds of thousands if not millions of rural Canadians who are poor, depending on the definition, often are in worse shape than their urban counterparts.
“The thing that struck us all on the committee is that it is out there and in many ways it is more difficult than in urban areas because of distance and isolation.”
There was evidence of more suicides, depression, family tension, abuse and illness in rural Canada because of poverty and lack of accessible services.
The interim report made no formal recommendations after hearing from academics and experts offering differing versions of the scope, severity and definition of rural poverty.
Fairbairn said the committee was merely setting the groundwork for its hearings in the countryside, where it will seek solutions from those caught up in the problem.
“The question that Canadians and their governments need to ask is whether rural Canadians have the right to enjoy the same quality of life as other Canadians or are they second class citizens,” asked Fairbairn. “Our challenge as a committee is to find ways to halt the decline and bring hope back to rural Canada.”
The committee argued that since many rural poor leave to live in cities, the problem may be larger than the numbers suggest. And dealing with rural poverty will help cities by reducing pressure from the arrival of poor migrants with low education and skills from rural areas.
The Senate committee said tough farm economic times are a major factor even if rural poverty is a much broader issue than low farm incomes.
But the committee said there also are some positive signs including a growth in rural manufacturing jobs and prospects for other developments including biofuel plants.
“While this report focuses on a subject that is at times unavoidably discouraging and depressing, the committee wants to insist on the resilient ‘can do’ attitude that it knows is alive and well but perhaps hidden in rural Canada,” it said.
“The committee strongly believes that rural Canada must not be abandoned … simply because it lacks the clout of urban areas.”
