Moving Forward with Rural Revitalization in BC: Part 2 of the CIT Conversation with Victor Cumming

by hans peter meyer

Victor Cumming is a regional economist with 30 years experience in community and regional economic development (CED) activity. Based in Vernon, BC, Victor works for Westcoast CED consulting [insert pic here] He was the Master of Ceremonies at the October 2008 Reversing the Tide conference in Prince George, and was also involved in aspects of organizing the conference. Communities in Transition interviewed Victor for the March issue of the CIT Information Resource. We will continue to update this conversation on rural revitalization in future issues. More information from Reversing the Tide is available at the Communities in Transition home page.

hpm: The last time we spoke was in early March, just before a meeting of several of the organizations involved in last October's Reversing the Tide conference.

Victor: Yes, there was a meeting in March, and some decisions were made about how to go forward with this initiative around rural development in BC. There were also some other events – the Northern Sustainability Forum in Smithers, forums in Chu Chua and in Kamloops – that are connected directly related to the Reversing the Tide conference follow-up. [editor's note: CIT interviewed Tim Pringle about the Northern Sustainability Forum here.]

hpm: What kind of legacy is that conference leaving at a community and regional level in BC?

Victor: The key thing I'm seeing is that the agencies working on these issues are connecting. In the past they'd been working more or less in isolation. Reversing the Tide has helped to give them a sense that, while specific communities and issues may be different, there are common, across-the-board issues. They're starting to say, "We have to find a way to link our activities in a more systematic fashion."

In the past, they've worked on a 1-to-1 basis, a provincial or federal agency working with a community or region. Sometimes the senior government agencies have worked together. But in BC there hasn't been a linking of all the people who are working on the the issues. This has limited the impact of the work that's been done. It's also limited peoples' views of what the next steps are. So, instead of a linked process in the province in general, there's been a series of individual community, 1-to-1 processes with little or no cumulative impact or broad knowledge gain on how to rural development in systematic way.

One of the biggest consequences of this approach has been an understatement of the seriousness of the rural development issue in BC.

hpm: Is this changing?

Victor: We've had some significant movement amongst some of the key organizations working on these issues. They're saying, "Wow, you're right. We need to work on this together. And we need to focus our activities jointly. We need to forward strategies that are far more common than they are different."

So we've now got some conversations taking place between these organizations. They're beginning to try to identify a clear method, putting forward a single strategy – or a single strategy with a number of different activities. These might be slightly different by region, but overall the strategies would be identical, planned and implemented regionally.

Pulling these organizations together is much easier to say than it is to do. There isn't a history of these groups working together in this fashion. It was one of the luxuries of the meeting in early March. We had many of the key organizations in one room, recognizing that, "We sound the same, we face many of the same issues." Getting that group to then take the next step, to say, "Yes, we're an entity with common issues and purposes, and we want to bring a single message to senior levels of government" – this is a breakthrough we're hoping will have an impact. We're hoping to see some results in place by early fall of this year.

hpm: Where do the events in Smithers and Chu Chua, for example, fit into this?

Victor: They're also allowing for greater regional participation. They ensure that a greater number of organizations are sharing this information, hearing the same themes, seeing an emerging common vision, and exploring the same strategies.


hpm: This all sounds very positive.

Victor: From an organizational point of view we haven't experienced stumbling blocks. And that is positive. People are beginning to see the common issues, that across the province there is a need to move forward together on a common strategy. Organizationally, this is a success. A critical part will whether this combination of energy can have an impact on senior levels of government. I think that this will be a question that can only be answered as we move into the fall.


hpm: Since we last spoke there's been a provincial election. Does this change things?

Victor: It's given us a bit of a window. An election, even it's the same party in power after the event, usually there's a shift with what they want to accomplish. Even with the same party in power there are new MLAs. The election and forming of a new government gives the government an opportunity to make some changes, to look at what they're doing and not doing. There's a window for insertion of the concepts we're talking about. I see 2-3 new MLAs in caucus who understand these concepts. We'll be focused on presenting what we're doing as an opportunity for the new Provincial government as it moves forward.

We're also presenting what we're doing as an alternative to those responsible for rural development – Western Economic Diversification, for example. They're currently trying to implement the national "stimulus" package. We're saying that what we're talking about could be a critical component of this package, one of the things they could do, to make BC's rural communities more sustainable.


hpm: What has their response been?

Victor: They don't see an exact match with what they think the stimulus program’s role is. Our job is to help them understand why it should be a component of what they're trying to do. How it fits their mandate. Those discussions are going on between rural development organizations in BC and senior agency staff. We're hoping that this opening will be created within the next 6 months.


hpm: What about leadership and context. In our previous conversation we talked about the context of rural development in BC, and how some previous potential initiatives in the mid 1990s – Forest Renewal BC was an example – withered or were shut down before they could deliver. The need to look at rural resource dependent communities has emerged again. Why now? Is it because of the pine beetle crisis?

Victor: Let's go back 12 months, because the past 12 months have been highly unusual in terms of provincial and international economic activity. At that time, in the spring of 2008, we had both the federal and provincial governments citing success in terms of provincial and federal economic growth. That success, however, was not across the board. When looked at from the point of view of rural BC – outside of Vancouver and Victoria, and the regional centres like Prince George, Kamloops, Kelowna, Nanaimo – if you exclude these centres, you discovered that population had been in decline or stagnant. The lucky ones had been growing very, very slowly. Much slower than the provincial average. You also discovered that employment growth had been lagging significantly. This in direct contradiction to the very significant flows coming from these rural areas – tax and royalty flows, to both provincial and federal governments.

To have people argue that we're being successful, at the same that we're experiencing population decline or stagnation, with significant aging in rural areas, faster than in urban areas – well, it's much more difficult to argue success. Agencies that are based in these rural areas had been watching this daily, weekly, monthly. For them, the situation was worsening, not improving. At the same time they were seeing substantial senior government investment in urban areas. And that same level of investment had lagged, and continues to lag, in the rural areas. It seems odd that we have these rural areas, having a huge net cash outflow of their region up to 12 months ago, having real difficulty accessing funding for rural development they were requesting. A real imbalance. This has become clearer and clearer to many in recent years.

And yes, in mountain pine beetle infested areas you'd expect this economic decline to be accelerated as annual allowable cut tends to dwindle as we move towards 2011-2012. But, boy, you go to areas that don't have mountain pine beetle, and they've been experiencing the same kind of economic decline. The North Island and mid coast, for example. No pine beetle there. Central Kootenays: very small pine beetle impact. Yet all experiencing that very same lag in growth and imbalance in economic benefit from resource royalties and tax flows. Whereas, at the provincial level, you saw the coffers growing dramatically. The GDP growing dramatically. It's because of significant contributions from parts of the province that are experiencing stagnation or population decline. I think the current initiative has less to do with crises like the mountain pine beetle than it does with a recognition by a lot of people that, "Hey, this isn't working for us who live out here. And we'd like to have this imbalance shifted; it's not working to our benefit."


hpm: What's happened in the past 12 months to change this?

Victor: International economic events have exacerbated the situation. Primarily because commodity prices have been affected dramatically. Rural areas are heavily dependent on commodity pricing of natural resources: wood, coal, other minerals, agricultural crops. What's happened has worsened the trend that was already there. It's been there for 8-10 years at least. Some of these trends go back 20 years.

Interestingly, the impact of mountain pine beetle infestation would have added employment and economic activity in affected communities over the past 5 years leading up to 2008, because commodity prices were high and harvesting activities were high. But what we see is that all that activity only helped those affected communities hold the line, to stay even.


hpm: So where is leadership coming for rural development in BC?

Victor: That's the main struggle: How to amass the leadership for the rural development agenda. And it's a struggle because most rural leaders are already exhausted, dealing with local issues. So, we don't have the capacity in the rural areas, people with surplus time and expertise and money, to throw their effort into this issue. You ask them to get involved, and the request is just one more thing layered on top of everything else that rural leaders are dealing with. They find it overwhelming.

Leadership is a consistent problem when trying to organize around this kind of an issue during crisis times. People just don't have surplus time or energy. Identifying and activating leadership is one of the critical things to do right now. Not an easy thing to do.


hpm: And yet there is some momentum here. Who is driving that?

Victor: To say that there are individuals driving this would be quite wrong. What we're seeing is quite a broad base of individuals and organizations saying, "We've got to move this along." There isn't one person driving the bus; there are a whole bunch of people on the bus, sharing the wheel. At some point we hope that some people will emerge, to take be the face of this, to take the wheel. Stay tuned!


hpm: Are there significant events we should be watching for?

Victor: These will emerge over the next 6 months. One of the important things that needs to happen right now is for this conversation to get into the media. It's very important right now.


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