Saskatchewan’s rural governments are failing to attract the economic development rural areas need, says a University of Saskatchewan report.
It’s not the fault of any council or of rural economic development groups.
It’s the fault of the local government system, which contains hundreds of tiny local jurisdictions too small to do an adequate job.
That structure must change if rural Saskatchewan is to survive, says the report, which was written by agricultural economists Jack Stabler and Rose Olfert.
“It can’t work because they’re too small,” said Olfert. “They don’t have the mandate, they don’t have the authority to do what has to be done.”
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The study, which was commissioned by the provincial government, breaks the province into areas that form natural economic zones, or “Functional Economic Areas.”
It says 11 or 17 regional municipalities including both rural and urban areas would be better at providing economic development for rural areas than the nearly 1,000 rural municipalities, villages, towns and cities.
Olfert and Stabler said they were more concerned with encouraging economic development than with providing cheaper RM services.
“The debate over taxation threatens to take prominence over the much more important issue of the economic future of rural Saskatchewan,” states the report.
Olfert and Stabler base their suggestions on analyzing Saskatchewan’s population trends and economic growth since 1936.
They noted that almost all the economic development in Saskatchewan in recent years has been in and around the largest cities and towns.
That isn’t fair for rural Saskatchewan, they said.
The province may be growing at three to four percent every year, “but that doesn’t mean any of that growth is going anyplace other than Regina and Saskatoon,” said Olfert.
Larger municipalities based around urban centres would be better able to share economic growth with rural areas.
Sinclair Harrison, president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, was infuriated by the report.
He said its recommendations would increase the flow of economic development to the cities.
If rural municipalities became huge, “you’re going to lose the volunteerism, the services, and I would suggest at the end of the day, if this is the model we go to, it’ll be at a higher cost,” said Harrison.
He suggested the authors of the study are out of touch with the reality of rural Saskatchewan.
Provincially sponsored
“This study was financed by (the provincial municipal government department). So was (Joseph) Garcea’s. Are they going to keep doing studies until they convince rural Saskatchewan that they’re wrong and the university professors are right?”
The report was cheered by Garcea, the head of a provincial task force that recently proposed massively reducing the number of municipal governments in Saskatchewan.
