Canadian farm and municipal leaders teamed up last week to demand that campaigning party leaders pledge to make significant investments in rural infrastructure.
The Sept. 25 letter from Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) president Jean Perrault of Sherbrooke, Que., and Canadian Federation of Agriculture vice-president Laurent Pellerin was unprecedented. 
“As the global economy grows more uncertain, we are calling on you to endorse a vision of Canada that includes prosperous farms, sustainable communities and a strongly integrated rural-urban economy. If cities are the country’s economic engines, rural Canada provides the fuel that fires those engines,” they wrote party leaders campaigning for the Oct. 14 election.
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Don Johnson, a councillor with the Municipal District of Taber and president of the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties, said winning the support of Canada’s urban governments is a boost for rural Canada.
“We need to get the message into the urban consciousness about the role rural Canada plays in their lives,” said Johnson, who also chairs the FCM’s rural caucus.”
Rural infrastructure was also on the mind of National Farmers Union president Stewart Wells last week as the NFU released a call for “a better Canadian direction” that would involve more investment in railways, an end to what the NFU describes as Conservative attacks on the Canadian Wheat Board and the Canadian Grain Commission, an end to cutbacks in food safety and inspection budgets and a refocus of public policy on family farms.
It said federal policy should focus on family farm profitability and farmer power in the marketplace.
“The outcome of this federal election is pivotal to the future – or lack of future – for family farms and for all Canadians,” Wells said in an NFU statement.
“We need to start at the beginning and put in place a better Canadian direction.”
