Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 21 - Evidence - Meeting of March 27, 2007
OTTAWA, Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 7:23 p.m. to examine and report on rural poverty in Canada.
Senator Joyce Fairbairn (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Good evening, honourable senators, witnesses and viewing audience to the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.
Last May this committee was authorized to examine and report on rural poverty in Canada. Last fall we heard from a number of expert witnesses who gave us an overview of rural poverty. On the basis of that testimony, we wrote an interim report, which we released in December and which, by all accounts, truly struck a nerve. We are now in the midst of our second phase of the study when we meet with rural Canadians in rural Canada. So far, we have travelled to the four eastern and four western provinces. Along the way, we have met a truly wonderful and diverse group of rural Canadians who have welcomed us with open arms into their communities and sometimes even into their homes.
However, the committee still has much work to do. We have yet to visit rural communities in Ontario and Quebec. We still want to hear from as many people as possible. In short, we have to ensure that we get this right and understand rural poverty to its core.
To that end, the committee continues to hold meetings in Ottawa with expert witnesses when the Senate is sitting. This evening's first witness is Mr. Larry Bourne, Professor Emeritus of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. Mr. Bourne will join us by video conference. He is the co-author of a 2003 paper entitled ``Small, Rural, and Remote Communities: The Anatomy of Risk.''
We have only one hour this evening to cover a wide variety of issues. Mr. Bourne, please proceed with your presentation.
Larry S. Bourne, Professor of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto, as an individual: I have been asked to appear before the committee with particular reference to a report that we prepared a few years ago for the Government of Ontario as part of their evaluation of the relationships between the provincial government and its local communities. The report focused on small, rural and remote communities, which we looked at as the anatomy of risk. I should say as a disclaimer that I do not claim particular expertise in studies of rural poverty. On the other hand, I have had an interest for decades in the problems and challenges facing small and peripheral communities. In a country the size of Canada, we certainly have a lot of periphery.
I will take a few minutes to give you a sense of what the report was about. It is one of two that my colleagues and I wrote. The other was on big cities and maintaining vibrancy, diversity, stability and sustainability in large cities.
This report focused on the particular situation of small, rural and remote communities. It tries to set a context first by looking at the major trends that have affected communities in Canada in general, and in Ontario in particular, revolving around changes in demography, changes in the economy and in trade, changes in household living arrangements, and the effects that these have had on particular places. The second section attempts to develop a simple classification of small, rural and remote communities and to clarify what challenges they face. The middle part focuses in more detail on institutional arrangements, governance structures and alternative forms of government that are possible at the sub-provincial level. The fifth and final chapter looks at lessons learned and makes some suggestions with respect to the ability of communities at risk to meet present and forthcoming challenges.
Having said that, I can now get into some specifics, if you would like, or we could take questions, however you want to proceed from here.
The Chairman: If you could give us briefly some specifics, I think that would help the conversation.
Mr. Bourne: The initial part of the report argues, or at least tries to demonstrate, the social and economic transformations that have taken place in Canada in the last two or three decades. I would argue that on the social side the overwhelming transformation is the demographic transformation, which is the shift from the high fertility of the immediate post-war period, the baby boom, to the historically low fertility levels that have characterized Canada since the 1970s and 1980s, along with the implications of that demographic transition for the future of Canadian communities.
Lifestyle changes and economic changes have worked in parallel, but the main focus in this report is demographic. For one thing, we actually know the most about demographic changes and they are the easiest to predict for the future.
Canada's growth now is overwhelmingly driven by immigration. Some two-thirds of growth is through immigration. Over the next decade, that will approach 100 per cent.
Which communities in Canada grow and which do not is increasingly a function of their ability to attract and retain migrants. Judging by recent census material, the ability to attract migrants, particularly immigrants, varies enormously across the country. Indeed, this may be the Canadian problem. All the transformations that are happening in other countries are played out in Canada on a very diverse canvas. The implications are very uneven from place to place.
Among the most vulnerable communities in the face of these trends, particularly the demographics, are small, rural and remote communities. For a number of reasons — the report lists their characteristics, which I can repeat for you — many of these communities have difficulty retaining their own population, particularly the young cohort, and considerable difficulty attracting new immigrants. The demographic structure of many small, rural and remote communities is skewed toward the older age cohorts. You can pretty easily predict what will happen to that population over the next 10 to 20 years.
One result of these trends is that decline, both population and, along with it, economic employment decline, will become increasingly widespread and will be most severe in the eastern part of the country, particularly in regions with in smaller, rural and remote communities.
A recommendation we pick up on at the end is the need to face the demographic reality when developing or attempting to develop policy recommendations to deal with the repercussions of that reality. It may be of interest to the committee that we also did one of a series of reports for the Ontario Smart Growth Secretariat. We did South Central Ontario, but I remember the one for Northeastern Ontario, which was a beautifully produced document about what governments in Northern Ontario intended to do over the next 10 to 20 years. On page 59 of the report, a footnote says that the population of Northern Ontario has gone down by 15 per cent in the last decade and is likely to go down by at least that in the next decade.
To me, that last sentence, that footnote at the end, made the rest of the report irrelevant. They should have started with the demographic and economic reality upfront, that is, that the population of Northern Ontario will be significantly less than it is now, and ask themselves: How can we make Northern Ontario communities the best possible communities to live in at a reduced size? Of course, very few people want to start with that premise, but that is the reality.
The specific challenges of these communities are many. Many of them derive from small size. Many small, rural or remote communities lack economic diversification, which means they are vulnerable to external economic shocks. Many of them have limited employment opportunities, or what one might call thin labour markets. They also face the challenge of high production and servicing costs. Most, again because of their size and limited fiscal base, provide a limited range of public and social services. They also have difficulty attracting capital investment and, as I mentioned before, immigrants.
Similar challenges face many small communities, wherever they are. The focus of our study was that when these small communities are also isolated, those challenges are multiplied. In Canada, we have rather too much geography, and many of these communities are indeed isolated. By that, we mean generally that they cannot substitute work in one community for work in another, or substitute service access in one community for that in another.
Recently, at a conference in England that dealt with questions of peripheral communities, I argued that, with the exception of the Scottish Highlands, there is no place in the U.K. that is more than an hour from a significantly large city or metropolitan area. In Canada, we have several hundred communities in that category. The combination of what smallness means and lack of diversity, combined with physical isolation, makes these communities extremely vulnerable to any change in demography, which we are seeing, or in employment and trade.
That is a start. I would be glad to continue or take any questions.
The Chairman: I think we already have some questions for you, Mr. Bourne. Maybe we could start with the senators and just roll right along. Within the questioning, you can add in some other thoughts when you need to.
Senator Oliver: Professor Bourne, thank you very much for appearing before the committee tonight. I find your thesis fascinating.
I know that your report was produced in 2003. What changes have you had in your conclusions since then?
Here is what I think it is about: rural communities are in decline, rural communities are facing depopulation and you do not think there is anything that can stop the bleeding. Since 2003, have you found anything that can stop the bleeding of people leaving rural and moving into the urban areas — not just migrants, but people who are already in the rural areas moving to urban?
Mr. Bourne: It is difficult to generalize about all rural and small town communities. The ones am generally talking about here are those that are not within an hour or an hour and a half of a metropolitan area. I think the challenges are completely different for those communities. The ones that are small and isolated are the most difficult.
At the end of our report, we debate the question of providing subsidies for services in those communities and some incentives for employment creation and maintenance of services in an attempt to hold some of the younger population in those communities. However, there is an ongoing debate about the extent to which we should subsidize these peripheral communities.
If you are a market economist and you believe in the importance of efficiency and having people pay for services that they use, which are much more costly in these isolated communities, then you do not support any subsidization scheme. My own view is based on equity — or place-based equity, as I call it in the report: We do have an obligation as a society to ensure that individuals in these communities have a reasonable level of access to services and jobs. However, it is a challenge to do that.
We do it in some ways through tax incentives; at least at the provincial government level, there are tax subsidies for people in these communities. We do it by subsidizing roads, medical care and health facilities. We do it, in some cases, by moving employment opportunities into those communities, but it is difficult.
Senator Oliver: Let me ask you another question, if I may. Take a community that is an hour and a half from a major urban centre, which used to be largely agricultural but had hospitals and lots of infrastructure in it. You seem to discount the significance and the help that information technology and knowledge-based communities can have in being able to make this transition.
Richard Florida in his books talks about smart societies and how smart people want to move to smart societies and smart communities. They can do a lot in these knowledge-based communities that are not necessarily large urban centres. Do you feel there is any hope for these knowledge communities that are an hour and a half from major urban places to be able to become self-sustaining?
Mr. Bourne: I think for some of them, yes; but they have to have other attributes, as certainly Florida would argue, that would retain people or attract other people in. They have to have some amenity value or cultural or historical attractions for people. For those that do, yes, that is a possibility.
You can sit in Whistler or on the coast of Nova Scotia and publish your newsletter or whatever it is you do. However, communities that do not have that amenity value face real difficulty in attracting in-migrants and retaining current residents.
We do make a recommendation about stronger inputs through e-commerce and e-education programs, and that could apply everywhere. However, the experience in most parts of the world is that unless there is a strong magnet to keep people there, that will just facilitate their departure.
Senator Mercer: I have not read your paper in detail, but I have been trying to scan the recommendations, which I find interesting. You talk about ``planning for decline'' and recognizing ``the inevitability of decline'' of such communities. You say that hard choices need to be made. You refer to the provincial government in this paper, but the government cannot provide subsidies to everyone everywhere in the province; nor can all small communities survive and provide a reasonable minimum level of services and jobs. You go on to say that the province should also consider restricting further settlement expansion in Northern Ontario by drawing firm lines indicating where it would and would not guarantee access to public services.
Are you saying that we, government, should abandon rural Canada and allow the deterioration of services to drive people into urban or semi-urban centres?
Mr. Bourne: No, I am not saying that. The comment that you have picked out is the hardest-hitting one in the report, I think. It is not writing off rural or small towns. What it is saying is that given the demographic reality, it will be very difficult to support all the communities. Most of them will have smaller populations, and it seems to me unlikely that we can provide the necessary health and medical facilities in all of those communities.
Senator Mercer: I come from Nova Scotia, as does Senator Oliver. Further on in the report you talk about innovative methods of planning for downsizing and convincing communities that their future is smaller or may require, in some extreme instances, the introduction of provincial relocation grants. These grants, in the long run, you say, will almost certainly be less expensive than the public costs involved in maintaining everyone in isolated communities at high costs.
In Eastern Canada, in Newfoundland in particular and in rural parts of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia and in other parts of Atlantic Canada, those are fighting words.
Mr. Bourne: Yes, indeed.
Senator Mercer: They are fighting words to suggest that government be involved in the relocation of its citizens because of where they are. We have already had the devastation of rural communities in the outports of Newfoundland because of the closure of the cod fishery and similar problems in other parts of Atlantic Canada.
I am curious. Have I misread this? Is this not one of the suggestions that you are making, that governments need to be thinking about this?
Mr. Bourne: Governments need to be thinking about it. They need to be thinking about the kind of settlement system or communities that they can sustain in the longer term. If government decides that it can sustain them all, that is fine.
I have an example that may or may not be useful because it is an extreme example. I did some work in the Northwest Territories several decades ago and developed a settlement plan for the Northwest Territories, which was at that time facing fairly rapid development in the creation of new communities. Based on our analysis, we recommended that there was no need to build any new communities in the far North. I do not know whether you are familiar with Uranium City or Sherridon or other Northern communities, which are really a nightmare. They are communities that were left to the vagaries of the market, and when they lost their economic base, the communities essentially folded. People who invested in the community lost their shirts.
The recommendation in the Northwest Territories was no more new communities; instead, the government should try to guarantee high-quality services, including education and health services, in a number of communities that it felt it could sustain in the longer term.
Thirty years later, that is actually what they are doing. None of the gold mines in the Northwest Territories will be a town site. People will be flown in for a period of time and flown out. That is an extreme case of isolated communities.
Senator Mercer: In the Northwest Territories they are talking about planning for growth, not for shrinkage.
Mr. Bourne: That was a plan that would allow decline. Once the mine runs out, then you close down the work camp and people go back and live in Yellowknife. A lot of people in these Northern communities have been enticed to invest in housing, businesses and the like, and then ten years later the mine closes and they lose everything. We end up carrying the cost. As you know, Uranium City, Sherridon and Lynn Lake are current disasters or potential disasters.
In more settled agricultural, rural areas, the challenge is different than in the extreme North where, once the mine closes, that is it; there is virtually nothing else for people to do. Frankly, I think it is unfair to entice people into these communities where you know the lifespan of the mine is relatively limited.
Senator Mercer: That is probably true in Northern British Columbia when the beetle kills all the trees, and in coastal Newfoundland, where all the fish are already gone.
In your recommendation on economic development, you say that economic development strategies should be designed to promote growth in those communities that have the greatest potential. Of course, this is a recommendation you gave to the Government of Ontario. What you have said to me is that you have asked the government to pick winners and losers. We are infamous as governments for not doing a very good job of that, but we are good politically in saying that we want to service all Canadians — in our case, Canadians; in the case of your report, Ontarians — equally and provide the same level of service to everyone.
I am having some difficulty with governments, whether federal or provincial, picking winners and losers in terms of certain towns in certain parts of the country where, as you describe, the marketplaces have certainly dictated winners and losers pretty fast.
Mr. Bourne: Yes.
Senator Mercer: Should governments go in and put in infrastructure? Do governments take the gamble along with the private developers?
Mr. Bourne: Yes. Richard Florida would argue they should, particularly where communities need a little assistance — again, those communities that are relatively small or have a mix of functions or industries that are not doing terribly well.
Senator Mercer: Are you recommending the opposite?
Mr. Bourne: No.
Senator Mercer: You said Mr. Florida would recommend that that is what we do, but you are recommending that that is not what we do. Is that right?
Mr. Bourne: No. I am just saying that we suggest that the best development strategy is to put resources in communities that have the best chance of succeeding. Mr. Florida would follow that argument as well.
This raises serious ethical questions, obviously. In one sense, we are arguing for recognition of the challenges. At the moment, by and large, we are assuming that we can support every community of every size across the country. That is what we would like to be able to do, under an argument, in this case, of what I call spatial equity. However, it is unlikely that we will be able to do that. As the demand for higher order services increases, it will be an even greater challenge to provide access to appropriate medical and educational services.
Talking about a fairly realistic perspective, at a recent conference a planner from Thunder Bay remarked that the planning strategy in Thunder Bay is to create the best possible city of a population of 85,000 that they can create. Currently, the population is 120,000 so they know what their demographic future is. They are intending to do the best they can to create a city that is a wonderful place to live for 80,000 people.
Most communities have their heads in the sand and assume that they will grow, but most of them will not grow. Thunder Bay is trying to take the challenge and do the best that it can. You begin by making different kinds of decisions when your scenario is a Thunder Bay of 80,000 as opposed to 120,000. Those decisions are more efficient and, ultimately, socially more equitable.
Senator Callbeck: Thank you, Professor Bourne, for sharing your views with us this evening. You mentioned that you feel an obligation to ensure that individuals have a reasonable level of services and jobs in rural areas. Yet, I read in your paper that the province should phase out regional economic development programs. How do you justify phasing out economic development, which is all about creating jobs, when you say that we have an obligation to ensure there is a reasonable level of jobs?
Mr. Bourne: There were very different views on the panel. The view of the economist on the panel was that the regional development schemes are generally useless and are not an efficient way to provide additional employment. She thought that we should let the market determine where the jobs are.
Coming from a more social equity position, I take the view that we have to be more proactive. The agents for doing that might not be the existing regional development agencies but they might be more focused on sectoral-specific initiatives designed with particular reference to each community's needs and the opportunities that the community provides.
Senator Callbeck: How about work? I believe that you suggested not using existing regional development agencies. Did I hear that correctly?
Mr. Bourne: The economist on the panel suggested not using them. My response to that was that if we are not using them then we should use sector-specific strategies.
Senator Callbeck: Can you talk about how that would work?
Mr. Bourne: Such strategies would centre around education, health and, in some cases, culture and tourism. Those agencies would not simply subsidize but would provide a strategic initiative suited to the specific community. In some cases a cultural approach would be better, in others an industrial approach, and in others still a transportation approach. Those sectoral initiatives could be forthcoming from the agencies that are competent to work in those fields. They would be tailored to future considerations and to the communities at risk that are involved.
Senator Callbeck: Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan who appeared before the committee argued that rural communities need to band together to solve their problems. I know that is not possible for many communities because they are too far apart. It was suggested by these researchers that communities should pool their resources and generate economies of scale. Do you have any examples of where that has happened?
Mr. Bourne: The report spends a great deal of time talking about Northern Ontario, where most services are delivered at the regional level by regional boards. It is almost impossible for many of these very small communities to provide the services because of the lack of scale economies. One could generalize by saying that in Northern Ontario, almost all services are delivered at a regional scale involving more than one community, and that is the only way to go in such a case.
If you want to retain some local autonomy over the services rather than have the province deliver all of them, then local communities will have to get together in regional service districts. It is my understanding that in Saskatchewan, health care was delivered not by individual communities but by regional health boards. Certainly, that is one of the best approaches.
The scale in Northern Ontario makes regional functions all the more challenging simply because of the distances involved. However, they are better than the alternative and they generally seem to work.
Senator Gustafson: Professor Bourne, thank you for opening a very interesting subject. There seems to be a scramble for the dollar between the urban centres and the rural centres, to some extent, and rural Canada is losing the game. However, in some of our larger cities, we are seeing that it is close to impossible for wage earners to own a home. It is my view that our urban centres will run into a lot of trouble in the years to come and they will not be able to support what they could support 30 years ago.
When I was a young fellow, it was not impossible to own a home and building one did not cost too much. Today, that same house is $500,000. What will happen in these major cities? Compare that to what is happening in rural areas. For instance, we had a witness from the Prince Albert pulp mill who said that when the mill closed down, they could not get $20,000 for a good three-bedroom home. Of course, nobody had a job, so there was no reason to live in the town. These will be pretty serious problems.
I will add one more remark to that. When I left Regina at 4:30 this morning, there was a planeload of mostly young people flying to Calgary, Alberta. They were obviously going there to be at work for 7:00 or 8:00 — it was a two-hour flight at most. That is the trend we are into. Do you have any comments?
Mr. Bourne: One of the results of my work and of this report — it sounds academic I know — is the unevenness of growth and change in the country. We have roughly six large regions that are growing quite rapidly, while in the rest of the country, according to the 2006 census, the population went down by 1 per cent. We are ending up looking at the possibility of two Canadas.
It is not a rural-urban split. It is a few large regions, including the rural areas around them, versus those regions that are not growing for one reason or another. One reason is their inability to attract immigrants.
As you probably know, there are some success stories, including several small communities in Manitoba that, through the Canada-Manitoba Immigration Agreement, have been able to attract immigrants to their communities — immigrants they think will actually fit in. They make quite an effort to assist them in settling in. Some of these communities are doing quite well in agricultural Southern Manitoba.
Regarding your point about housing, if you take this concern about two Canadas, in my view it is no longer East/ West, French/English, rural/urban; it is these growing regions and the rest. In a list of what characteristics differentiate these, the biggest difference of all is the price of housing.
In some parts of the country, the value of housing is close to demolition value, and in other parts it is extremely high. This has implications for the mobility of labour, in that it is a challenge for anybody to move from Brandon to Victoria or from New Liskeard to Toronto. It also affects the intergenerational transfer of wealth. You could argue that the people in smaller, declining communities have, in some ways, lost the single greatest asset — or at least potential appreciation of that asset — compared to somebody in Vancouver or Calgary. That is part of the intergenerational transfer.
The situation of some regions growing and others not is reinforced by the demography that I have been talking about from the beginning. Unless we find some way to spread new immigrants around, we will end up with the contrast becoming wider between the Canada that is growing and the Canada that is not. For some of these smaller communities, people will be trapped, particularly by housing costs.
Senator Gustafson: The towns in Saskatchewan that I know of — and I have served for 14 years in the House of Commons and now 14 years in the Senate — are probably around 15,000 people; they have the hospitals and the facilities they need and they are ideal places to live. To me, they are better than Toronto because you do not have to fight with everything and you have a good community life. Lethbridge, for instance, is a beautiful little city.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. That is where I am from.
Senator Gustafson: Those are ideal situations. Those towns are driven by probably an oil field or a gas field, something that is making dollars and creating jobs.
Then there are other areas where there is only agriculture. They are doing fairly, not as badly as the areas where the pulp mill closes down. I am saying all that to say this: I think our government has failed agriculture in Canada. When we compare our situation to the United States or the European Union and what they have done, I think we are getting awfully close to missing the boat. Do you have any comments on that?
Mr. Bourne: Many small communities that grew up as service centres for the rural population now find that the population they are serving is one half or one third of what it used to be. They are struggling at the lower end of the hierarchy. What seems to be happening in those places, including Saskatchewan — maybe in particular Saskatchewan — is a concentration of population moving away from the very small villages into larger communities, particularly the two largest ones, but also some of those you mentioned with a population of 15,000 or more. In the last census, that did not apply to Moose Jaw or North Battleford, which are losing population.
In part, I am suggesting that if we were to look at Saskatchewan and its settlements, if we were to say that it is likely that unless we attract more immigrants Saskatchewan's population will be smaller, then what is the best way to accommodate that population and keep Saskatchewan viable and its communities healthy and prosperous?
I find it generally unacceptable that everybody assumes growth. By assuming growth when it is not likely to happen, it puts a lot of people at risk, particularly the next generation.
Lethbridge is booming, by the way.
The Chairman: Yes, it is, but it is also surrounded by agricultural areas that have gone under incredible strain, what with BSE and droughts. When that happens, the pressures it puts on the towns and then on the city are evident. The strain is visible.
Senator Chaput: Could you see municipal governments working together? I do not mean regionalization; I mean two or three municipal governments sitting down together and looking at what could be done to keep those small communities alive. Do you see a role for them? I have not read the paper, but what do you think of municipal governments?
Mr. Bourne: Do you mean municipal governments sharing?
Senator Chaput: Yes, coming together and discussing and sharing and deciding what can be done together to enable those communities to go on having a decent life instead of downsizing.
Mr. Bourne: I agree. For many smaller communities, the only way they will prosper is by joining with those with whom they share a common space or perhaps who are not too far away. Ideally they work together to ensure that at least one of them has, for example, certain specialized services that are not likely to be in each community individually, but they might be able to get one between them.
Senator Chaput: Does it come naturally from municipal government, or do you need to facilitate the work for them to bring them together?
Mr. Bourne: I am sure it does not come naturally. I will not get into local governments' ability to innovate, but they tend to need either a carrot or a stick, the carrot being incentive. If you get together, you can have this regional hospital, but only if you get together and only if you agree on how you will share the service and what your contribution to it will be.
As I mentioned, in Northern Ontario, virtually all services of any size and cost are now on a regional shared basis. Too many small communities could not do it themselves, whether it be education, health or other specialized public services. There are now regional districts. I would think it is fairly common in most Western countries now, when you are in rural and remote areas, to create synergies, if you like, among communities that are not too far apart to share resources as well as opportunities. However, they need a little push usually.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Bourne. You have provided us an interesting vision of various parts of the country, including the North, in which I have a particular interest. There you are in Toronto. Technology is wonderful and does work. We are very pleased that you have taken the time to talk with us tonight.
Our next witnesses are Ms. Vanini, Executive Director of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, and Mr. White, Chair of the Rural Ontario Municipal Association. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario is a non-profit organization representing the municipal order of government, and the Rural Ontario Municipal Association is an integral part of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. We have an hour to cover a wide array of issues that we have already started on, and we are looking forward to hearing from you. As you can tell from listening, we have a lively bunch of questioners.
Chris White, Chair, Rural Ontario Municipal Association: Good evening. Thank you for that introduction. As well as being the chair of the Rural Ontario Municipal Association, or ROMA, I am the mayor of Guelph/Eramosa Township.
ROMA is an important member of the AMO family, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. We represent a significant rural constituency in Ontario.
ROMA and AMO believe that rural communities are vital to the fabric of our society. Cities may be the engines of growth, but rural communities provide much of what fuels that growth and development. Ensuring that these communities are healthy and viable is critical to the long-term sustainability of our country.
In many ways, poverty is a municipal issue. People who are unemployed, with limited access to opportunity, child care or transportation; people who are under-housed; seniors who are becoming isolated as families move away — these are people who live in our communities. Municipalities are on the front line of providing quality of life. They are the first to see the consequences of poverty.
In rural areas in particular, the consequences of poverty are manifest in ways that are less obvious. The costs to municipalities are more than just financial. When local citizens are living in poverty, it impacts overall community viability so that its future potential is at stake. Municipal governments have an important role to play in terms of economic development. In Ontario, they are also the providers of key community health and social services. To effectively do so, however, is largely a question of resources.
Local governments need enough funding and flexibility to respond to dynamic local needs. Not only does federal and provincial policy need to consider the special challenges faced by rural communities, it needs to line up with adequate funding.
Rural communities face challenges that are both distinctly rural in nature as well as shared with the municipal sector as a whole. Any efforts to address rural poverty must account for this if they are to be truly successful. One of the most significant barriers faced by municipalities across Ontario is the $3-billion gap or net subsidy that municipalities provide each year to pay for provincial health, social services and income redistribution programs.
In Ontario, this policy robs communities of their capacity to respond and to meet the challenges of a changing global economy. Diverting resources away from real municipal services, such as transportation and recreation, undermines the quality of life in rural communities. It results in Ontario communities and families shouldering the highest property taxes in Canada.
For families struggling to make ends meet, higher property taxes pose a significant drain on their personal resources, taking away from their ability to carve out a comfortable existence for themselves.
It is important to remember that policies work differently in different places. What may work in urban or Southern Ontario may not work in rural or Northern communities. For this reason, policy development must consider the unique needs of rural areas. It needs to respect and consider the special challenges these regions face. In particular, policy-makers need to consider that the costs of delivering programs in rural and Northern communities are often higher than they are in urban centres. Making sure that policy is inclusive and that it is tied to adequate funding will help rural communities mitigate poverty and assure lasting prosperity.
Beyond policy development, decision makers must consider new ways of providing access to services for people in rural communities. Better integration, including one-window access to services, will go a long way to ensuring that equitable access to services results in improved outcomes for Canadians no matter where they live.
The roots of rural poverty are not always clear. There is no one single cause. Rather, there are a number of contributing factors. However, one of the clearest predicators of a good standard of living is education and training. In rural and remote areas, accessing a good education can present a particular challenge.
The vast majority of post-secondary institutions are concentrated in the more urban and southern parts of Ontario. For students outside of these locales, higher education is more than a question of high school grades. To attend school, they must live away from home, which translates into higher transportation and living costs. Lower family incomes and rising tuition exacerbate this situation. It is not surprising that rural students do not participate in post-secondary education nearly as much as their urban counterparts.
These gaps require immediate attention. More innovative delivery methods and even partnerships for post- secondary access must be explored. More than anything else, education is a gateway to opportunity. The next challenge is to ensure that such opportunities exist in rural communities.
Both out-migration and difficulty attracting newcomers are symptoms of the fact that rural communities tend to have fewer job opportunities than urban locales. With more unemployment and a higher proportion of children and retired people than urban centres, rural areas have fewer working people to support local viability. Creating a more even distribution is largely about attracting and retaining skilled workers and encouraging the young and the educated to stay.
To assist in this, research and development needs to tap into long-term prospects. ``Rural'' is not a synonym for ``agriculture'' or ``forestry'' or ``mining.'' Possibilities exist in such fields as medicine, tourism, biotechnology, aerospace and renewable energy generation, and these possibilities need to be cultivated. Opportunities that tie into the new knowledge-based economy as well as jobs in more traditional fields are needed. This will encourage the type of broad- based development that creates long-term local prosperity.
However, new opportunities cannot develop without the proper support of the local infrastructure, including information and communications technology, transportation, water and waste water systems. These are critical to attracting new businesses and new opportunities. Ontario's municipalities have been facing a substantial infrastructure deficit that stifles rural economic development. In my township of 12,000 people, we have an immediate infrastructure deficit of $11 million. To draw new ideas and people in, communities need to possess all the features of the new economy.
It is also important to those living in poverty, for whom a lack of infrastructure is a significant barrier to participation. In rural areas, even if the necessary social services are in place, they can be virtually unreachable if you lack the means to get there. In many regions, affordable public transit is only a dream. If a family can afford a vehicle, it is often used to transport the breadwinner to work. Eliminating the infrastructure and transit deficit plaguing Ontario municipalities will allow them to deliver the types of services that can alleviate poverty and stimulate new opportunities.
Opportunities can also be created through special labour market development initiatives. This is an area of leadership for municipalities. Municipalities know their communities best. No one is better positioned to identify local challenges and opportunities and to develop strategies to overcome them. A recognition of this expertise by the federal and provincial governments could channel energy and resources in the right direction, ensuring that employment strategies for rural and Northern communities are as effective as possible.
The recent signing of the labour market and immigration agreements between Canada and Ontario represent an important opportunity for rural and Northern communities. Already municipalities are working with Canada and Ontario on labour market development strategies. This type of partnership helps to increase the likelihood that the full spectrum needs of municipalities will be met.
These types of strategies need to be supported by programs and services that support citizens, both new and old. Practical, affordable housing is a serious deficiency in rural areas. Some people move into cities to obtain it. Public health resources are also limited in some communities. With appropriate municipal resources, municipalities will be able to provide local services that will help to support broader labour market development and immigration strategies.
Rural poverty also represents a significant threat to community health and sustainability. Sustainable communities have the resources they need to ensure positive growth and development long into the future. It is not a straightforward concept, and it requires a multi-faceted commitment. I mentioned that policy needs to be considered in terms of how it will impact rural and Northern communities. It may also be a valuable link to policy development across different policy streams. Investment in child care programs, for instance, is not just a child care policy. It affects other aspects of the community as well, such as the labour market. When resources are tight, these types of linkages are especially important. When policies and investments are strategic and considered, they can help to make community health and sustainability not just a vision for the future but a reality.
There is a need for more direct links between rural and urban areas. We live in a world based on interconnections and interdependencies. Rural poverty needs to be addressed not only as a rural phenomenon but also in relation to how it impacts the country as a whole.
Education and awareness are needed to market local products and to improve the viability of natural resource-based industries. This in turn will help to preserve the sustainability of our local food supply, environment and economic base. These kinds of linkages require partnership and cooperation between all orders of government. We need to ensure that our goals are aligned and that our strategies are cooperative. The whole is only as strong as the sum of its parts. We need to ensure that policy cultivates strength across all municipalities, including rural communities in particular. The support of our federal and provincial partners is needed to make certain that our rural and Northern communities do not just exist but thrive.
Rural poverty is complex with a variety of causes and effects. We believe that, by working together, we can make prosperity something that all members of our society can share.
Senator Mercer: Mr. White, you talked about limited access to opportunity, child care and transportation, and you mentioned people who are under-housed. Let us talk about child care. The current government provides $100 per month to families for each child under a certain age. Have you noticed any effect from that in your communities since the program began? Has it changed anything?
Mr. White: I have not seen any direct financial impact from the program. It might take a little more time to know how completely it works.
Senator Mercer: Has it created any child care spaces?
Mr. White: Are you asking whether the $100 has driven up the market for child care?
The Chairman: I am not sure about the market, but has it increased the supply?
Mr. White: I guess it depends on the specific child care provider. If it is a for-profit child care provider, then the $100 provides more support for the parents, but I do not have any specific numbers.
Senator Mercer: We know that one of the major problems in rural communities is transportation, particularly for the rural poor. If you are poor and live in a rural area, it is most likely that your job is not next door and that you have to travel some distance to get there. The current public transit subsidies have little or no effect on most Northern Ontario communities. Is that correct?
Pat Vanini, Executive Director, Association of Municipalities of Ontario: Funding for public transit in Ontario is undertaken by the provincial and federal governments. It has hit some of the smaller centres by virtue of what I call specialized transit needs, but not the public transit systems that come to the minds of most when we talk about public transit.
In rural Ontario, the roads are the transit system and need that investment as well. As Mr. While said, part of the challenge has been investment in infrastructure. In Ontario, we have seen huge deficits in that area for a variety of reasons. As I talk to my colleagues across the country, I find that such a challenge is experienced by most provinces and territories.
The response to that question is significant. An analysis was done in early 2000 or 2001 that said that in Ontario we need about $5 billion annually over five years to wipe out the infrastructure deficit for transportation, transit, social housing, et cetera. That is a significant amount of money. It will not happen along those ways, but that is the scope and scale of the problem.
Governments like to download and municipal governments are at the bottom end of that fiscal ladder. As Mr. white said, in Ontario, by virtue of such downloading, municipal governments took on a lot more over the years than we had seen in the many years before. In Ontario, if we were not paying for those social programs, which are more appropriately paid through income tax, corporate tax and so on, there would be an easy solution to the $3-billion problem juxtaposed to the $5 billion in infrastructure. We simply have to find $5 billion, and that is not easy to do. You can see how the math sometimes aligns itself, but finding that solution is important.
If I may, I will reflect on a comment made by the previous presenter on services such as child care, welfare and social housing, when he talked about regional delivery in Northern Ontario. In fact, it is regional delivery throughout all of Ontario, where there are about 50 service delivery agents. That was a way of looking at some efficiencies in the delivery of those services as they were downloaded to the municipalities. The phenomenon is not restricted to Northern Ontario but is also throughout Southern Ontario. In some places, it lines up directly with municipal governments, such as in the city of Toronto. Toronto is fairly large, so it has its own delivery service. There are other parts of Ontario where there is a shared service amongst a number of municipal governments.
Senator Mercer: I have a question about the $3-billion gap, not necessarily for my edification but for the people watching on television. The $3-billion gap you talk about that is faced by municipalities across Ontario is the figure that you have put on the downloading of services that used to be provided by the province to the municipalities. Is that a correct interpretation?
Ms. Vanini: It is a fairly correct interpretation. Within that, there are probably also some areas where the federal government did some vacating of funding as well. If you follow social and affordable housing, it has all gone to the municipal government in Ontario, whereas it is different in other provinces and territories. Ontario was unique in that way.
Senator Mercer: Would the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and the Rural Ontario Municipal Association support the federal government's getting back into the social housing business?
Ms. Vanini: The federal government has provided some money for affordable housing. Part of the challenge we have is how the federal government got out of the social housing program. Some of that housing is in dire need of massive capital improvements. How we deal with the funding of that new capital and the debentures, et cetera, is the piece we are trying to give some attention to. It needs to be handled. I cannot remember the figure off the top of my head, but somewhere in the area of $13 billion is the capital improvement maintenance over a number of years, throughout all of Ontario.
Senator Mercer: That is the ongoing problem. If we get into providing social housing as opposed to affordable housing, there is the ongoing capital maintenance and administration.
Mr. White: It is an even broader principle than just social housing. Municipalities would appreciate any level of government taking anything back that has come down to us, whether it is welfare, the Ontario Provincial Police, social housing, and across the board, because it is coming right off the property taxpayer and it is a burden that is restricting our ability to provide the services in our local areas. It will leave people on fixed income having a hard time hanging on to their homes because of the property tax. I think it is a general principle.
Senator Mercer: Mr. White, you proposed that education is a gateway to opportunity, and I agree. I immediately scribbled down a question: How does the government make this happen? You went on to say that possibilities exist in the fields of medicine, tourism, biotechnology, aerospace and renewable energy generation, but how do you link the two? How does government take the statement that education is the gateway to opportunity in rural Canada and actually implement something that will work and help?
Mr. White: There is the possibility of setting up schools in some of the rural areas, where they may have alternative energies growing and various activities like that. It is also as simple as bringing high-speed Internet and broadband into some of the communities that do not have access to that so that you can have Internet courses. You do not even need bricks and mortar. The concept of pulling people into the urban areas just to get an education is outdated, with today's technology. Investments in broadband might be one answer.
Ms. Vanini: As an example, Thunder Bay now has a medical teaching hospital, the first in Northern Ontario. This was done for a number of reasons, one of which is that if we can train Northern people in medicine, they are more apt to stay in Northern Ontario. It will be interesting to see how well that theory plays out in reality, but that was a significant demonstration of how you can make that kind of investment and achieve a number of other objectives along the way.
Senator St. Germain: Further on education, what do you think is the best way to deal with this? Mr. White, I believe you made reference in your presentation to the inability of many rural children to access the quality of education that urban children have the opportunity to avail themselves of. I have done a lot of work with others on this committee in the Aboriginal area, and that is the same problem we have with our Aboriginal population, which I am sure is impacting some of your rural communities as well.
It should be a constitutional right that everyone should be able to access the same quality of education. How do you think it would impact rural poverty if there were a consistent form of education, say, throughout Ontario?
Mr. White: I think about what happened in the 1960s, when the universities all of a sudden spread throughout Ontario, and the impact that had on communities and on the education of people outside areas like Toronto and Kingston. There was a dramatic increase.
If you manage to satellite some type of university or education facilities equitably throughout the province, you make it more accessible. It comes down to a matter of cost: transportation, tuition and books. If I can take my classes down the street, I am more inclined to go, whereas if I have to come to Toronto, it is not something that the family can necessarily afford.
By distributing a service a little better, you make the cost of participating lower. It is simple logistics.
Senator St. Germain: Is there a challenge in obtaining the teaching professionals who have the ability to teach at the same level as better urban schools? In the studies we have done over the 15 years that I have been here, we have found that, in most cases, the quality of a person's education is directly related to their ability to improve their plight, from a wealth point of view.
Mr. White: Are you talking about the quality of teaching available?
Senator St. Germain: Yes, the quality of teachers. That is one of the biggest problems in remote areas that affect our Aboriginal communities. I wonder whether it is the same in your remote communities.
Mr. White: I am not familiar with all teachers' colleges, but I would think that most teachers coming out of an accredited teachers' college in Ontario would generally have the same level of training. Will they remain in the Aboriginal or Northern communities? That is again a more general problem. It is the same with doctors. It is all interconnected. The better the quality of life and standard of living, the better you may be able to attract a higher level of teacher or doctor.
Senator St. Germain: Has there ever been any consideration of paying some of these people more for working in these remote areas?
Mr. White: You would have to take that up with the various school boards. It depends on what goes on at a First Nations level.
Ms. Vanini: As Mr. White was saying, part of the challenge is, first, attraction, and then retention, in whatever profession. In terms of what municipal governments can do, there is in Ontario very limiting legislation that would allow municipal governments to do bonusing of activities, for lack of a better expression, except when it comes to positions. There is an exception that allows municipal governments to invest in and create a medical centre, special housing, and some other incentives to bring medical practitioners to their communities.
We have a huge under-service list, and not just in rural areas. There is an under-service list that includes some fairly significant middle-sized and larger municipal governments. There is even under-servicing in Toronto. It is about that attraction, but then you also have retention. If there is a huge gap, there is competition and people move around.
Oftentimes professionals come as families to a community, so you have that double edge of the sword, so to speak, to figure out how to accommodate an entire family within the community in those professions. Certainly there are some opportunities in the immigration area. I had an inquiry several months ago through a member of Parliament who knew a qualified engineer who could not find a job in Toronto; his spouse had medical training. They just did not know enough about Ontario, about where else they could go.
Through the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement and other things we have to get people to understand that there is more to Ontario and let them know where those opportunities rest. Many municipalities in Ontario are looking to immigration to help them fill their labour skills gaps and to enhance other qualities in their communities.
Senator Callbeck: I want to ask you about the health of rural Canadians, because we know from a study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information that rural Canadians are not as healthy as their urban counterparts. It says here that rural Canadians tend to smoke more, drink more, eat fewer vegetables and do less exercise. The upshot is that they tend to die at a younger age and suffer from more illnesses along the way. Why do you think that is so? What can we do about this problem?
Mr. White: That is an interesting study. I do not know where that information came from.
I would suggest that some of the difference in lifespan is access to services. There is no doubt that you are more likely to survive a heart attack if there is an ambulance around the corner than if you are on a farm. Perhaps some of it is lifestyle simply because of lack of services. In other words, in a big urban area there are many things I can do other than sit at home drinking beer and smoking cigarettes; I suppose that is the implication. Part of it may be entertainment, the quality of life in that town, the things happening there and what attracts you to remain in that town.
Some of it, I am sure, is access to doctors. My township, which is right outside of Guelph in the Greater Toronto Area, with a population of 12,000 people, has a doctor with 2,000 patients. We are trying desperately to set up a family health team and attract doctors. One man was interested in coming but his wife needed to get a job with the school board; that is the family element again.
These are generalizations, but it seems likely that an urban person with easy access to a doctor or dentist goes on a regular basis and takes care of the basic health; in a rural area, on the other hand, there is no easy access and it takes much longer to get basic health services. If you cancel an appointment, those times double up.
Some of it is simple lifestyle; some of it is access to entertainment; some of it is the ability to get to services; and some of it is straight up paramedic, ambulance service availability.
Ms. Vanini: I was raised in a village of about 1,500 people. When I was growing up, there was a gentleman who would walk into town after having a breakfast of three eggs and half a pound of bacon every day and walk into my father's menswear store to buy his daily plug of tobacco, and he lived to be 96 years old. My grandfather was not far behind him.
In some ways, I am not too sure my lifestyle is the better one. I think part of it is just the nature of community, and sometimes it also is genetic. I hope I have those genes.
I think, too, it is the awareness of our health; we have learned more. Research has taught us more about the body — how it deals with things and how to react — and medicine has advanced. That sophistication has changed. How people get that information — whether, in fact, they get the information — is maybe part of it as well. I think through public health there is a growing awareness of those things.
With respect to regionalization, Ontario now is experiencing the creation of local health integrated networks. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. For those who are used to having a service fairly close, this is sort of regionalizing things and it will feel different. Whether or not the level of service changes for the better or for the worse is yet to be seen because we are just beginning this piece.
You can organize and reorganize everything many times. At the end of the day, you have to make sure you have measures and you have to review those measures and what are they achieving. I live in fear of reading a report that says the program did not quite achieve what it was meant to do. Part of me says we should have been taking a look at that earlier on in the report.
Having worked in government for more than 25 years — I have let out a big secret —another observation I would make is that we need a variety of solutions. Ontario is a diverse province. There is no doubt in my mind about that, having worked at AMO now for more than 10 years. This nation is diverse as well, and we need a lot of flexibility in programs.
I have worked at both the provincial and the municipal levels, as well as AMO, and if there is one thing I have learned it is that communities understand themselves very well. Give them the tools and they can get the job done. They can be innovative. The problem is that they just do not have money. I hate to say it, but the core of many of the challenges is how to get the financing to get the job done.
Senator Callbeck: I agree with you.
Senator Oliver: I notice a stark difference between the testimony you are giving and the testimony given by Mr. Larry S. Bourne, a professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto, who was the witness immediately before you. I know that you were not here for all of his testimony, but basically he said that they did a major study in Ontario, published in 2003, and that study showed that people are moving to urban areas. They are leaving rural areas, which are shrinking for several reasons, including low fertility rates and the fact people do not want to stay because they can make more money in the urban areas. He said that rural areas are not really relevant any more, that they are in quick decline and that we should get ready for the depopulation of rural Canada.
Do you have any hope for rural Canada, and if so, on what is that hope based?
Mr. White: That is an interesting comment. It would be hard to argue with the fact that large areas of this province, specifically, are depopulating. However, again, the province is diversified. Where I am, which is a rural area, our biggest problem is growth. It is overwhelming.
There are lots of areas just outside the greenbelt, in a horseshoe around the GTA, where growth and infrastructure are the major issue; you want to see if you can put the brakes on it. It is a bit of a Catch-22, because the poor folks in the North are depopulating because there are no jobs and the youth leave and the community dies out.
How do you answer that question? Are these things inevitable? Are they driven by globalization or single industry towns? It is complex.
I would suggest that the concept of regions he was bringing forward is a good one in the sense that the issue is not just urban versus rural. There are many viable rural areas — up and down the Huron coast, up in Tobermory, for example. Many rural areas in Ontario are very vibrant and survivable.
The trick is to maintain that rural way of life in an urban sea, where in some cases the province is no longer allowing severances for farm lots in agricultural areas to prevent the spread of hamlets so you maintain an agricultural base that is rural. Then those agricultural industries need to find ways to take advantage of agri-tourism or do some value-added things on their property, in which case we need some tax revision at the provincial level.
To say that rural Ontario is dying out is probably true in some areas. There is an absolute decline; that is undeniable. Is rural gone across the board? Absolutely not. Is rural irrelevant? That is a rather broad statement to make.
One thing we say and hear — and it sounds clichéd — is that rural provides much of the fuel that drives the cities. If you took Toronto and dropped it on the moon by itself, it would have a hard time trying to survive without the rural around it, so I think that is kind of a broad statement.
Ms. Vanini: I am a planner by training. Mr. Bourne and I do share that. I think he is absolutely bang on to say planning for growth is relatively easier than planning for decline. It does get you to the question of at what point do you throw in the towel in some of these communities. I am not sure whether that is what you were trying to get it, but it is very hard.
Across Canada, many municipal governments have amalgamated either by their own choice or by someone else's choice. I have watched communities struggle when things like that are forced upon them. There are ways to manage that. However, I cannot picture any government saying, ``You are out of here. It is just not viable for you to be in this community any longer.'' It is an interesting theoretical discussion, but in harsh reality, I cannot see anyone doing that. We do have ghost towns, but they have ended for a lot of strange reasons.
When I look around, I see a lot of strengths in our communities. We must unleash those strengths and find our leadership. Mr. Bourne was also talking about the gold mine at Elliott Lake. When that gold mine closed, it affected everyone's credit rating, including the Province of Ontario. Elliot Lake has now figured out its place in Northern Ontario as a retirement community, but it created this overall strategy that it needed to achieve that goal. It had multiple components. If we will be the Northern retirement community, what do we need? We need health care. What does that look like? How do we get it? How do we fund it? What will these people do when they are here? They will need recreational facilities. What do those look like? How do we fund them?
It requires pretty in-depth analysis and planning for decline, and Elliott Lake is growing, but still in relative terms. It takes care and consideration. You cannot have programs that hang around for just a couple of years. In terms of education and child care, you need programs that last for generations. That is important. If we want to ensure that our youth are properly educated, we have to plan for that next generation as well. Those are investments beyond one or two terms of any government. Those are lifetime investments to achieve results that you can measure and push through and make families actually evolve.
I would like to share with you the mission statement that the association crafted about four or five years ago. It goes to the essence of what I think is both an urban issue and a rural issue. It says that in Ontario's municipalities, people and families can live, thrive and prosper in the communities they call home and children will have the choice and opportunity to live and work in the communities where they were raised.
That is true whether you are in rural Ontario or urban Ontario. I live in Toronto. I do not think my children will ever be able to afford to live in Toronto. I will have children who are displaced out of the community they were raised in. It is the same as in rural Ontario.
Senator Oliver: In your paper, you say it is hard to keep young people in rural areas today because they are going to the cities where they can make more money.
Ms. Vanini: My children, when they are ready to buy a house, will have to go to that hinterland of Toronto. That is the challenge. I think we will see incredibly increased movement of people out of the communities they were born and raised in and where they would probably like to stay to some degree. It is about choice.
Senator Oliver: You are the Rural Ontario Municipal Association, and ``municipal'' to me means that you will survive on the taxes you are able to raise. If people in rural Canada are poor, and if poverty is becoming a major problem in rural Canada and they cannot afford to pay their taxes, what will municipal organizations do to keep up the infrastructure of rural Canada?
Mr. White: They are not. If the money is not there and you cannot build the road, you cannot build the road. That five-year plan becomes a 15-year plan.
Senator Oliver: That goes right into Mr. Bourne's thesis, then.
Mr. White: I concur with that. I am trying to indicate that I honestly believe a large part of rural Ontario is viable and will survive. There are areas that need some extra attention, no doubt about it, but the implication that rural Ontario as a whole is not viable and will disappear is not correct.
Ms. Vanini: Just to clarify, let me speak from the Ontario perspective. For municipal governments, most of the revenue comes from property taxes or user fees, and in some cases grants. I can give you rough figures for Ontario. Municipal governments raise about $18 billion in property taxes. It is the most regressive form of taxation there is. I have to sneak that in, but you already know that. In Ontario, if we collect $18 billion in property taxes, $6 billion of that automatically goes to the province for education because they deliver and fund education, but we take a portion of it out of property taxes. That $3-billion gap that we also mentioned is what we have to provide to the province for welfare, child care, public health, housing, et cetera.
If you add $6 billion for education and $3 billion for the download, that adds up to $9 billion. That means that 50 cents of every property tax dollar does not stay in the municipal government; 50 per cent of every dollar goes to another order of government. If we could keep that 50 cents, we could do more on infrastructure and more in terms of creating activities for healthy lifestyles. That is the essence of the problem in Ontario, which is unique compared to other provinces and territories.
Mr. White: We have no control over the monies taken out of the municipal funds. They can take a piece of policy or legislation and increase what they are paying per year, and the municipalities just pick up the tab with absolutely no ability to control it.
Senator Chaput: Mr. White, you talked about access to high speed Internet. There is no doubt that all communities should have access to high speed Internet. Rural communities have children and businesses and hospitals but no high speed Internet. There may be Internet that works, but if it is not high speed, it is too slow.
I have not heard anything from either of you with regards to tradespeople and the positive impact of those trades on rural communities. For example, an electrician or a plumber could have a decent life living in a small rural community and working in maybe one or two surrounding municipalities. I do not believe you have addressed that aspect in your presentation, have you?
Mr. White: No, but I am not sure I understand your question.
Senator Chaput: For example, you believe in education, but if a municipality would talk more about trades and have some of those school kids that do not want to go to university sent to colleges to learn trades, they could come back and work in the community. Have you looked at that aspect?
Mr. White: Now I understand. I agree wholeheartedly. We did not single out any particular piece of education. We were referring to more of a general access to education. I did not mean to imply university only. The trades themselves, as we all know, are viable long-term careers, and in some cases fairly lucrative. Because of the nature of the education system over the past couple of decades, everyone wants to go to university. You could train plumbers and masons back into the community. There may be an opportunity to set up a trade school in a rural community because there is a need for electricians and the rest of it. That is a piece of the education puzzle. Because we are so far behind on that right now, there may be an opportunity and a way to enhance that requirement in the province.
Many tradespeople, as you are probably aware, are nearing retirement. There will be a huge gap and there may be an opportunity. If the province or the federal government would like to set up a couple of trade schools in the rural areas we would certainly welcome them.
Ms. Vanini: As an observation, my son wants to become an electrician and is pursuing an apprenticeship program, but you need to find someone take you on first. That is an unbelievable job. I can actually spend an entire day trying to help him do that.
I also want to make the link to not only high speed Internet but also the technology of teleconferencing. As Part of the trades apprenticeship program you still have to take training courses. If you are in rural Ontario, having that technology would facilitate that piece of the puzzle as well.
How to get there is the question. It will take dollars to put in such facilities. From what I understand from people who do training on-line, it is not as dynamic as interface with some expert, even through a teleconference in a classroom.
As Mr. White was saying, some things can come together and link nicely. There is a good example of how to achieve a lot by linking objectives and shared interests.
Senator Gustafson: As for the impact of globalization on our society, it appears to me we that have not done enough research. Half our society opposes free trade or anything that moves toward globalization. There are so many areas that impact us and I will mention a few. China and India, for instance, are processing and manufacturing. If that does not have an impact on Ontario manufacturing, nothing will.
I do not think we know enough about that. For example, we are going into ethanol. Do we know how far ahead of us the Americans are in ethanol plants? They tell us they have used up all the corn; so much corn that they do not have any left to feed their cattle. That is how that thing has boomed.
In Canada we have not done enough research in these areas, and in the area of agriculture it is impacting us tremendously. In the area of manufacturing, just look at Chrysler, GM and the parts makers. They are having big troubles. As a country, we should be doing more research and know in which areas we can accomplish things and know in which areas we are in big trouble.
Mr. White: You are absolutely right. This is not just a rural issue, but an urban one as well. The impacts may be more devastating in a rural community that is a single-industry town whose mines go to South America or where there are forest industry difficulties and competition on a global scale is difficult. Ethanol for our farmers is an absolute boon. I understand that the folks down in Mexico who make tortillas are rioting in the streets because the price of corn has gone through the roof. We do not know the dynamics involved.
Again, I support your comment. We definitely need research in order to develop a longer-term plan. There are opportunities. Not everything is necessarily negative. From an agricultural perspective, ethanol may be one of the things that help us survive.
It is a reality we have to face. It is like one of the comments the gentleman made, that Thunder Bay is planning for 85,000 people as opposed to 125,000. They know that is the reality. If you do research in rural Ontario and rural Canada, you look at what single-industry towns or industries are susceptible to global competition from China, India, and all the other nations that are rising along. We have to have a plan going forward.
Senator Gustafson: By way of example, when we were in the Maritimes, the fishermen there told us that they take the fish and ship it to China, and in China they process the fish and ship it back to North America. I wonder about such things. Of course, there is a vacuum of jobs in the areas where they used to process the fish right there.
There are two sides to the story. It is very interesting. In a U.S. broadcast I heard a gentleman say that we can use all the corn they can grow in the next 10 years. That is the demand for corn.
Senator Oliver: Is that used largely for ethanol?
Senator Gustafson: Yes, for fuel. There are others who argue it is in fact immoral to use up all the food to make energy.
My point is that we should be researching these things. I can remember when Don Mazankowski was the agriculture minister. He said that we do not know enough about the agricultural situation internationally and we should be studying these things. As far as I know we pick up information from the newspapers and what we see on television. To really have an in-depth inquiry into globalization and similar issues I think would be very profitable for our country.
Mr. White: You are correct. One example is alternative energies, the way they use biodigesters and wind farms and so forth in Europe while we are in the Dark Ages. We have Europeans coming over wanting to set up biodigesters that take all the farm manure and take all the grease out of the restaurant traps but you have zoning issues and planning. We need to study those things because those are future opportunities to keep rural communities alive. We are not progressive enough. We need to look at what places like Europe are doing.
Senator Mercer: I am fascinated by your figure of $18 billion for property tax, of which $6 billion goes to education. When I moved to Toronto for a short period of time in 1987, I sent my son off to the local Catholic school, and right away they asked me to sign a piece of paper to assign my property taxes to the separate school board as opposed to the public board. Kids did not get in unless the parent signed. If you switched to the public board, they were very quick to get you to sign it the other way.
Is there a built-in inefficiency in the education system in Ontario because there are two boards? I will be drummed out of the church next. I am not proposing that we do away with separate schools as we did away with them in Nova Scotia, but is there inefficiency in having two school boards administer this $6 billion in property taxes that goes to education?
Mr. White: That is a difficult question to answer. The purpose behind indicating whether you are a public or a Catholic school board supporter is that is the funding in each school and in each school board is based on a per pupil space. It is not a matter of separate or public; it is simply a way of getting the proper funding to where the pupils are, to make sure that we divvy up the pot based on where the pupils actually sit.
In terms of internal efficiencies for schools, that would be a difficult argument. You would need somebody as an expert from the school board. You can make that argument in different boards and jurisdictions. There are multiple levels in school boards that may have inefficiencies, regardless of whether they are Catholic or public.
Senator Mercer: I appreciate that, but it seems to me that $6 billion is a big chunk out of your $18 billion. If you can maintain your property tax level by introducing more efficiencies in how that $6 billion is spent, you could keep it at $6 billion instead of letting it creep up to $7 billion.
Mr. White: We do not have control over the provincial rates. In other words, even if they added efficiencies into the school system, they would not necessarily drop our property tax for that.
Senator Mercer: However, they might not increase the demand on your property taxes; is that correct?
Ms. Vanini: The way the downloading started was that 100 per cent of education was removed from property taxes. The province would do that, but they gave us more on the social programs.
When we started looking ahead to consider the level of exposure, at the time of the downloading in the mid-1990s, the increase in the number of students in the education system was, first, predictable and, second, not that significant compared to the aging population in homes for the aged, those who needed social housing, and the fairly high level of welfare in Ontario. When you speak about globalization and the role of economy, if there was ever a recession, the exposure for the municipal governments in Ontario is huge because we pay 50 per cent of administration costs and 20 per cent of welfare benefits. We have no control over the provincial economy, let alone a global economy.
When we started to take a look at that, the exposure was much greater here. Through pressure we got the province to come back to try to rejig what happened. They reduced education to 50 per cent. They keep changing the rates. In the recent provincial budget there is a plan to reduce the business education tax, which will help businesses and reduce the level of education tax they pay.
There are changes within that formula, but as Mr. White was saying we are raising revenue to help fund a service that is without a doubt important to communities, but whether the right way to do that is through property tax is a fundamental question. It is a different tax system. It does not reflect an ability to pay. It reflects the value of your home.
Mr. White: School boards could use every penny they can get. Even if they drove out inefficiencies, they would find areas for that money to go. The school system is definitely underfunded already.
Senator Gustafson: The tax grab between municipal governments is real — all three phases of government. For a modest average house in Southern Ontario, what would your taxes be?
Ms. Vanini: What market are we talking about?
Mr. White: You have brought up a very sore point. I will give you my county of Wellington for example. Market value assessment has a major impact on what you pay in taxes. A house in the northern part of our community may pay half the taxes as the same house in the southern part. To get an average home depends absolutely on where the home is. In my township it might be $3,500 for the same house. In Minto, up North, it might be $2,200. It is always fun to explain that to the rate payers. It is the exact same house, but market value assessment is different. You pay the same services, you get the same plough. You just pay less.
The Chairman: Mr. White and Ms. Vanini, thank you very much. This has been a great exchange. We appreciate it very much.
Honourable senators, we need a couple of minutes now to deal with a housekeeping motion.
Jessica Richardson, Clerk of the Committee: I apologize, senators, that during last Thursday's meeting I forgot to ask the chair to request the committee's authorization to seek an exemption to the competitive sourcing policies for charter flights in relation to the rural poverty budget. The reasons are the same as they were the last time. We do not know the number of individuals who will be travelling, exactly when we are going, and we do not have enough time. As well, we could be locked into using a larger plane than we need, in which case we would end up spending more money than actually required.
The Chairman: Is it agreed, honourable senators?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The committee adjourned.