Who Speaks for Rural Canada Now?

I’ve been very fortunate to work, in one capacity or another, with many rural and remote communities across Canada. Over the years, I’ve learned a great deal about their resourcefulness, work ethic, and creativity—and also about the growing concerns they are facing, particularly the slow erosion of community life, local control, and resilience.

Almost one in five people in Canada live in rural or small‑town communities—roughly 6.6 million people, depending on the definition you use. Yet even though rural communities generate much of Canada’s food, energy, and natural resource wealth, there is no longer a standalone federal body mandated to champion rural perspectives or co‑operative enterprise at the centre of government. In 2013, the federal Rural Secretariat was quietly dismantled, its staff positions eliminated, and its role in coordinating rural policy across departments effectively ended.

The original Rural Secretariat has not been fully replaced. Responsibility for non‑financial co‑operatives—such as housing, retail, and agricultural co‑ops—was shifted into what is now Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), where it sits as one file among many in an already crowded economic portfolio.

Fast‑forward to today, and ISED has re-entered the rural file by launching consultations and an online survey to develop a new Rural Development Action Plan for Canada. Last day to complete the survey is February 20th. That’s important—and overdue. Rural leaders have filled out enough surveys over the years to earn at least an honorary degree in “consultation studies.” The real question is whether this process will genuinely restore a strong, coherent federal voice for rural communities, or just add another glossy plan to gather dust sitting on the “rural PDF” shelf in Ottawa.

Based on our on-the-ground observations, federal initiatives often work reasonably well for larger institutions and conventional businesses. Still, they are not designed to recognize or resource smaller systems and social innovators and entrepreneurs, family-owned farms, community‑based resource projects, and small rural businesses across sectors such as mining, forestry, fisheries, and clean energy—even though these actors are crucial to solutions.

At the same time, many rural regions are contending with unreliable broadband and cellular service, limited or non-existent public transportation, deteriorating local infrastructure, gaps in health and mental health services, aging populations, housing shortages, and acute labour attraction and retention issues. In some communities, it’s still easier to flag down a neighbour on a gravel road than to get a stable internet connection long enough to finish an online funding application.

These pressures are particularly severe for rural, remote and northern Indigenous communities, contributing to youth out-migration, stress on farm families, and barriers for newcomers who might otherwise help address labour and demographic gaps. Yet many of the programs labelled as “rural development” still assume a standard growth-oriented SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) model, so community-rooted innovation is treated as the exception rather than the norm.

It’s a bit like trying to retrofit a barn using blueprints for a downtown office tower—technically possible, but you wouldn’t want to live with the results.

Some federal and provincial programs have genuinely helped rural regions, especially where regional development agencies and infrastructure funds have enabled municipalities to upgrade community spaces, main streets, and shared local assets. Well-designed agri-environmental and innovation programs that support soil health, on-farm innovation, and climate resilience also show promise when they are flexible and come with advisory support.

So the issue isn’t that nothing works; it’s

that the things that do work rarely reach the people and ideas that need them most.

From the vantage point of small social and systems innovators, social purpose organizations, and family-owned farms, Community Futures and similar business‑support programs rarely reach the smaller, high-potential social enterprises, alternative farm models, and community-scale experiments that do not resemble “standard” firms. Many conclude that “these programs aren’t for us.”

Too many promising initiatives never reach the application stage because existing programs are inaccessible, misaligned, or overly administrative relative to their size and capacity. When a three-person community group ends up spending more time learning how to use an online portal to apply for a grant than serving their neighbours, something about the “support” system is awry.

If the new Rural Development Action Plan is going to matter, it needs to intentionally bring small social and systems innovators, small farms, and social purpose organizations into the centre of rural policy—not treat them as exceptions. This means creating rural innovation streams designed specifically for community-scale actors, with very low minimums, flexible eligibility, proportionate reporting, and coaching support, so that early-stage and experimental work is not excluded by design.

It also entails retooling the intermediaries that Ottawa relies on—Community Futures organizations, regional development agencies, and other business‑support programs—so they can serve smaller, non‑traditional enterprises across rural sectors, including small, diversified and organic farms, community‑based resource projects, and locally rooted businesses in mining, forestry, fisheries, and clean energy.

These intermediaries should be asked to set explicit targets for reaching smaller innovators, to report publicly on who is being served—not just dollars disbursed—and to invest in community-led planning, leadership, and social infrastructure alongside bricks-and-mortar projects. Core services and infrastructure—health and mental health care, childcare, education and training, housing, broadband, and transportation—need to be treated as integral to rural economic policy, not as a separate social agenda.

Finally, a credible Rural Development Action Plan must measure success by well-being, resilience, and diversity, not merely by job counts and GDP. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a flexible, shared framework that rural communities can adapt and localize to track the priorities and indicators most relevant to their contexts.

In our experience, the only consistent common denominator in rural communities that are doing well socially, economically, and environmentally is strong local leadership: people who treat their community as an ecosystem and act as catalysts connecting residents, businesses, social purpose organizations, Indigenous partners and governments. They are part mayor, part convener, part unofficial IT support—and somehow still expected to bake for the fundraiser.

If Ottawa really wants this Rural Development Action Plan to be more than another consultation, it should start by backing those leaders—and then judge its success not by how many consultations it held, but by whether rural communities feel more able to live, work, and thrive on their own terms than they did before the survey ever went out.

Rural communities across Canada are doing a lot of heavy lifting—on food, energy, climate resilience, and community life—with fewer supports than most people realize. I’ve been lucky to work alongside many of them, and I’ve learned a lot about both their resilience and their growing frustration.

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