Opposition MPs set aside a full day of House of Commons time last week
to accuse the federal Liberals of intentionally isolating and punishing
rural Canadians in a bid to appease urban voters.
“We are a vast country and the vast majority of the people who live
beyond the glare of the big city are fed up,” said Saskatchewan
Canadian Alliance MP Garry Breitkreuz, who sponsored the debate.
He moved a motion condemning the government for “its sustained
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legislative and political attacks” on rural Canada.
The opposition list of federal crimes against rural Canada was long –
the end of the Crow rate, a lack of investment in rural roads, gun
registration, declining farm incomes and current attempts to pass
species-at-risk and animal cruelty legislation.
Often, the list of complaints turned into the opposition parties’
agendas.
The Alliance called for an end to the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, an
end to the gun registration system, less government and more tax cuts.
Saskatchewan New Democrat Lorne Nystrom suggested the problem was too
much tax cutting and too little government.
“We need a strong federal government that will take on the Americans in
terms of their trade policy,” he said. “We need a strong national
government with a national farm support program to make sure that all
farmers get back their costs of production as a minimum, plus a decent
income on which to live. That is the kind of vision we need.”
For the Liberals, of course, opposition accusations of a plot against
rural Canadians were partisan rhetoric devoid of reality.
“There is no attack on the lives of rural Canadians and on the
communities of rural Canada,” said secretary of state for rural
development Andy Mitchell.
Instead, the federal government is investing in infrastructure, trying
to equip rural Canada with better telephone and internet service and
trying to help rural communities grow and attract competitive
businesses.
Mitchell said he wants to “build a rural Canada that embraces the
world, not a rural Canada that hides from it.”
In the background of the Commons debate was a recent Statistics Canada
report that confirmed the income disparity between urban and rural
Canada.
The federal agency said that on average in 1995, per capita rural
incomes on the Prairies were more than $3,000 less than comparable
urban incomes.
While the gap between rural and urban incomes shrank during the past 20
years, it was more because urban incomes fell than rural incomes
increased.
In fact, between 1990 and 1995, “rural income declined by 1.2 percent
at the Canada level with most of the provinces experiencing stagnant or
declining incomes.”
Among rural areas across Canada, “Saskatchewan experienced the weakest
rural income growth from 1980 to 1995,” said the study. Between 1980
and 1995, average per capita rural incomes in Saskatchewan rose only
$300 to $14,916.
