I found it significant that when I went to find the article Canada’s rural-urban divide is getting deeper, and that hurts all Canadians  by Donald J. Savoie on The Globe and Mail website recently, it had already been discontinued after about two days and I had to do an internet search before I found it.
    Savoie writes about the significance of the recent federal election, which saw the Liberals fail to form the majority government they hoped for, though they captured the majority of urban seats while the Conservatives won in more rural areas but didn’t take enough urban seats to win power. 
    This basic divide between rural Canadians who have only 20 per cent of the country’s population but contribute 43 per cent of the country’s goods and services is the theme of Savoie’s piece. If urban Canada sees itself as the engine of economic growth, it is rural Canada that provides the food and fuel. About 70 per cent of the food consumed is grown in Canada and Canada is the fifth largest food exporter in the world, with 50 per cent of the food we produce exported.
    Rural Canada also, Savoie argues, produces nearly all the energy we use, from nuclear stations like The Bruce to off-shore and on-shore wind farms to oil wells. 
    Savoie points to the federal effort to reduce the use of carbon-emitting vehicles as another example of rural perspectives being ignored. “Electric vehicles make sense to people living in urban centres; the short commutes to work make the technological shift manageable. But things are different in rural Canada. Rural communities are by definition low-density, and many are located far from larger urban centres, which, because of their denser populations, are also where the services are – medical, dental, etc. Farming, meanwhile, is often the bread-and-butter industry of rural communities, and it is expensive to maintain and operate equipment, which does not run on electricity; EV tractors and combines are years away. In short, rural Canada relies much more on carbon-emitting energy sources than urban centres, which will make the urban-driven transition to clean energy much more difficult.”
    It does not mean that rural Canada, broadly speaking, denies climate change, Savoie argues. “Instead, it has a different relationship to climate change. Indeed, rural communities have a direct connection to the environment; they often depend on it for their livelihoods.”
    Savoie doesn’t argue that rural and urban dwellers operate independent of each other. Indeed, he argues, we need each other. Urban Canadians, he points out, need rural Canada for food, energy, minerals, paper products and for beautiful places to visit.
     Cities, meanwhile, are “home to Canada’s leading universities, to many of the important voices in the national media, to the country’s leading businesses, to the head offices of the country’s banks, and to all-powerful lobby groups”, Savoie argues.”Provincial and federal government bureaucracies, at their highest levels, are located in cities. In the case of the federal public service, the percentage of civil servants working in outlying regions has fallen from 72 per cent in 1972 to 58 per cent today, reflecting a significant migration into the National Capital Region.”
    Savoie argues that this sense that rural residents are controlled by urbanites was evident in one recent opinion poll  which found 72 per cent of rural respondents believe governments don’t care about them. That’s dangerous.
    It’s a powerful argument and one that I haven’t been able to convey properly in this limited space. If you have the time, do a Google search and read the article yourself.◊