For rural Albertans, the closer you are to a urban centre, the better off you are, says a report released by the federal government.
“Rural and small town Albertans are clearly not equivalent to their urban counterparts with respect to economic prosperity, social well-being, educational attainment and access to health care,” said the Rural Alberta Profile report.
The report analyzed census data from 1991-01 to gain an understanding of conditions in rural Alberta and help improve policy that affects rural areas. It’s the first in a series of 14 profiles that will be released by the federal government’s rural secretariat on all provinces and territories over the next year.
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Wayne Easter, parliamentary secretary for the federal minister of agriculture, said the report showed clear disparities in rural areas.
“What the profile tells us is there is fairly extensive and extreme differences between rural areas,” said Easter when he released the report Aug. 16 in Hanna, Alta. “We tend to look at rural as much the same. What the rural profile shows is there is very, very substantial differences.”
He said he hopes the information will help guide government policy.
The rural areas were divided into four zones depending on their influence from a metropolitan zone, abbreviated as MIZ: strong MIZ, moderate MIZ, weak MIZ and no MIZ. The report analyzed economic, education, social and health-care indicators within the four rural zones. About one-quarter of Albertans live in rural areas.
The report showed strong MIZ zones are the most similar to the more advantaged urban centres and even surpassed some. The aboriginal-intensive no MIZ zones consistently ranked last within rural Alberta. Moderate and weak MIZ zones fell in between.
The report found:
- High labour force participation and low unemployment was consistent across strong MIZ zones, while low labour force participation and high unemployment rates were found in no MIZ zones.
- Median personal incomes were highest in urban centres and strong MIZ zones and lowest in no MIZ zones. No MIZ zones derived the greatest portion of their income as social transfer income from governments.
- The lowest level of education is in no MIZ zones where 46 percent of the population had not completed high school. Strong MIZ residents were the most likely of all rural and small town Albertans to have a university degree (10 percent), although they were less likely to have a degree than urban Albertans (19 percent).
- No MIZ zones were the most likely to have lone-parent families.
- Rural and small town Alberta had the lowest number of health-care providers.
Ellen Goddard, chair of the University of Alberta’s department of rural economy, said it’s clear from the profile that one rural development policy doesn’t fit all of rural Alberta.
The provincial government’s present push to value-added agriculture would have little support in the weak or no MIZ zones, she said.
“It’s clear we need two drastically different policy strategies.”
Alberta MLA Doug Griffiths, who heads the Alberta rural development strategy task force, said the greatest value of the report is as a benchmark showing how effective government policies have been.
“It brought real facts and statistics to rural Alberta,” said Griffiths. “The greatest benefit is going to be as an ongoing basis.”
Roger Epp, acting dean of the University of Alberta’s Augustana campus, said the report knocks down the notion of rural areas as a monolith.
“It identifies that some parts of rural Alberta are suffering,” said Epp. He added that it is a good sign that both the federal and provincial governments are recognizing the disparity in rural Alberta.
“Their willingness now to publicly say parts of rural Alberta are in real trouble is what’s new.”
Epp used to say there were two Albertas: those who lived along the Highway 2 corridor between Calgary and Edmonton, and the rest of the province. Now it’s clear there are four or five Albertas, he said.
