Rural Canada getting the spotlight it deserves
Aerial view of Trail BC in the Kootenay Region of British Columbia. / ISTOCK PHOTO
It has been a busy spring sitting of Parliament, with the government releasing multiple strategies and MPs discussing issues affecting rural Canada on all fronts. We were pleased to see rural communities getting the spotlight they deserve in national public policy.
The government released a food security strategy that recognizes rural Canada’s role in ensuring sovereignty. It announced $100 million over seven years to expand local food production in rural and northern communities, which the government says will “support rural and northern communities to develop and implement solutions that work best to address their unique challenges.”
It also noted: “Food hubs are particularly important in rural and remote areas, including northern and Arctic communities, because they help overcome long distances and high transportation costs by consolidating local supply, reducing spoilage, and improving reliable access to fresh, locally produced food.”
The Rural Prosperity Group welcomes this recognition and investment, a testament to the need for a rural lens being applied on all public policies.
Additionally, the government released its AI for All strategy. Unfortunately, the strategy falls short on taking into account the needs of rural Canada. While the government is investing in AI literacy and working with public libraries “to bring AI literacy initiatives into every community, especially those in rural, remote and northern regions,” the strategy does not meaningfully take into account the fact that rural communities will be the ones supporting the AI revolution — with massive data centres central to ensuring success.
“With global data centre electricity consumption expected to more than double by 2030, where and how this infrastructure is built matters enormously,” the strategy says. “As demand for AI compute grows, Canada’s approach will be to link new data centre development with clean energy expansion, robust environmental standards, and tangible benefits for local communities, ensuring that Canada remains at the forefront of sustainable high-performance computing infrastructure.”
As the strategy provides no details on how or when this will happen, we urge the government to apply a rural lens to prevent any unintended consequences before implementing any new policies.
We were also pleased to see the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities join our call for a rural lens in its submission to the House of Commons Finance committee’s consultation in advance of Budget 2026.
It recommended “that the Government of Canada implement a formal rural lens across federal funding programs and policy design to ensure rural considerations—including geographic scale, limited fiscal capacity, and the economic contributions of rural regions—are systematically integrated into decision-making.”
As we have been calling for, we must ensure that no future federal regulation or policy — whether intentionally or inadvertently — harms rural Canada. This requires the institutional and consistent application of a rural lens at all stages of federal decision-making, ensuring that new programs or initiatives account for rural needs, challenges and opportunities.
Jacquie LaRocque, CEO of Compass Rose, reiterated this message recently in The Hill Times.
“The government’s own economic ambitions have put rural regions front and centre, playing a lead role on energy exports, AI data centres and food security among many others,” she said.
