Rural Canadians are not embracing the internet as quickly as rural policy makers had hoped, a Statistics Canada analysis has concluded.
The federal government has promoted internet and national broadband service to help rural residents overcome distance and isolation problems.
But a report authored by Statistics Canada analyst Vik Singh says there is lower internet use outside Canada’s major cities.
“This result holds even after we account for some major factors associated with rurality that are also associated with lower internet use such as an older population with lower educational attainment and lower incomes,” he wrote. “Rurality appears to be an independent constraint on household internet use.”
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He drew his conclusions from Statistics Canada surveys of internet use in 1998, 1999 and 2000. Singh did not draw conclusions about why rural Canadians are less likely to use the internet.
However, a senior official with Agriculture Canada’s rural secretariat suggested the main rural impediment could be simple access and convenience.
Kate Humpage, manager of rural research and analysis, noted in an interview that high-speed connection is not available in many rural areas and telephone dial-up with long download times can be frustrating.
“One of the issues is access and not just access but speed,” she said Jan. 22.
However, Humpage also said that research and analysis done within the rural secretariat suggests that rural young people use the internet as much or more than their urban cousins and that the younger the head of household is, the more the internet is used, whether in urban or rural Canada.
She also noted that urban self-employed are heavy users of the internet. “In rural Canada, self-employment jobs don’t always have the same information requirements.”
At Laurentian University, the director of a research institute specializing in rural issues said the findings should not be seen as a clarion call for new rural programs, at least until the full causes of the internet gap are better understood.
Derek Wilkinson, director of the Institute of Northern Ontario Research and Development, said in a published analysis there may be fewer reasons for rural people to log on.
“Rural advocates often think that demonstrating a deficit that is purely rural and not otherwise explained is an argument for special rural programs,” he wrote.
“What really matters is how much of the gap is purely rural. I think the more important gaps are likely those for the poor and for the less educated. If we worked on reducing access problems for these two groups, we’d be doing most rural areas quite a favour.”
