RURAL Canadians heard no reference to them in the federal budget last week.
As many struggle financially, they might have felt neglected as finance minister Ralph Goodale chimed off new funding commitments for the environment, the military, cities and tax cuts.
To give credit where due, Ottawa has committed to negotiating with the provinces to waive the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization deposit and, in the wake of BSE, has increased funding for food inspection and safety.
But the federal budget ignored the farm income problem and, more importantly, failed to recognize that the problems of rural Canada Ñ inadequate income, declining population and eroding services Ñ cannot be solved through farm programs alone.
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Farming might be the keystone of the rural economy, but one-industry communities are inherently unstable. Other businesses are needed to share education and health expenses and to support a retail service sector.
But people will not live or invest in rural communities without inadequate services and amenities, setting up a self perpetuating spiral of declining population and services.
Rural communities enhance Canadian society, making it more diverse through an intellectual, social and economic experience different from that available in an increasingly uniform urban setting. Rural communities make Canada a richer place and a federal rural policy is needed to reverse their decline.
Such a policy has been proposed in the United States. The New Homestead Act introduced in Congress in 2003 proposed measures to attract people and businesses to rural areas suffering population loss.
Even with a generous farm policy, 677 counties in rural America, many of them in the Great Plains states, have lost people.
The bill proposed forgiving 50 percent of college loans for those who live and work in qualifying counties, a home purchase tax credit, tax incentives for new buildings and small business and a tax-sheltered savings account with government contributions to allow people to buy a house, start a business or pay for higher education.
Also, a new $3 billion venture capital fund would invest in businesses in qualifying counties.
The bill did not survive the 2004 budget process, but its sponsors intend to re-introduce it.
Canada could afford such a program without increasing taxes.
There are hundreds of million of dollars in regional economic development programs for the West, Quebec and the Maritimes. But Edmonton, Montreal and Halifax don’t need help attracting people and investment. Rural areas do.
Reallocating this money to a rural development program would provide better value for taxpayers and society.
