Where is BC's Rural Development Policy?

by George Penfold

In my role as Regional Innovation Chair at Selkirk College, I have the opportunity to participate in many great workshops and conferences. Two recent events stand out – the Reversing the Tide conference in Prince George in October 2008, and more recently the OECD conference in Quebec City in October 2009. Both were on the theme of rural development and revitalization. What stood out at both events was the strong emphasis that all other Canadian provinces and other OECD countries place on rural issues and rural development compared to the province of BC.

The Quebec example

In Canada for example, Quebec has a "national" policy that says that the province wants

• strong rural areas,
• to ensure the survival of rural communities and identity, and
• to rethink ways of building on the extensive development potential of rural areas, all in a sustainable way.

These sentiments are backed up with a signed formal rural partnership agreement between the province, municipal organizations, and two province-wide rural interest groups. As all provincial parties have agreed, this partnership agreement will be sustained even if government changes. The main outcome of the Quebec rural partnership is a dedicated funding portfolio. Implementation happens through a regional priority setting and planning process, which in turn leads to a long-term funding agreement between the region and the province. They work with 7 year program time frames and provide support for management of implementation.

This is quite different from what rural interest groups have to deal with in BC. The typical scenario here is a project-by-project pursuit of funding, trying to access federal and provincial programs that seem to be in perpetual motion in terms of priorities, administrative structures, and funding for rural development.

International examples

An international example comes from Scotland. In 1965 the Scots decided to improve social and economic conditions in rural Scotland and to enable rural areas to play a more effective role in national development. They established and funded two regional development boards. In 1991, the development board in Northern Scotland evolved into Highlands and Islands Enterprise. It serves just over 440,000 people and has a budget of approximately $180 million annually. Their current focus is on:

• supporting high-growth businesses and sectors (thereby raising growth rates across the area)
  
• creating the infrastructure and conditions to improve regional competitiveness, and
  
• strengthening fragile communities in the region.

To address these goals, Highlands and Island Enterprise (HIE) aims to establish 500 or so business relationships by 2011. These relationships will help businesses develop and implement a growth plan that can be assisted with HIE financial support. In response to the infrastructure objective, HIE has invested in:

• wind turbine manufacturing and a related marine energy centre,
• centres for health science and marine science, and
• a new centre for creative and cultural industries on the Isle of Skye.

To strengthen fragile communities, the emphasis is on:

• investment in social enterprise,
• the acquisition and development of income-generating assets,
• building community capacity, and
• stimulating growth.

Another international example comes from Finland, which established (by legislation) a Rural Policy Committee (RPC). The Fins recently announced an objective of developing 100mbps internet access throughout the country. Compare this to BC, where most of our rural areas have – at best – 10mbps service, with some communities still on dial-up.A significant common theme in these examples is a strong national or “upper tier” government statement about the importance of rural regions to the future development of the province or country, and a strong regional development focus along with local development initiatives.

In BC we have no clear statement about the importance of rural BC to the future of the province. We do have the provincial regional trusts (such as the Columbia Basin Trust in the Kootenays and Northern Development Initiatives Trust in the north), and various federal programs (through Western Economic Diversification for example), but these initiatives tend to focus on specific projects, mostly at the local level. We have few regional development organizations, policies, management capacity, or investment dealing with the “big picture” or the types of regional needs and opportunities that are being addressed in Scotland for example. Victor Cumming, Vernon's resident economic development sage, talked about what this could look like here in BC in his conversations with CITinfoResource last year [see CITinfoResource interviews of March 2009 and June 2009].

What do we want for rural BC?

Rural BC also needs to be clear about what it wants. We do have history in BC with regional development in terms of delivery of provincial programs, but little history with regionally managed development initiatives. We've either been too focussed on "local", or not committed enough to make regional initiatives work, or not bold enough to allow real investment in the future. To some extent then, we have what we thought we wanted.

For most of rural BC, what we have is a piecemeal strategy of rural development with local and municipal focus. Rural communities have generally not fared well over the last 2 decades with this approach. Our strategy seems to lack any real rural focus, and has resulted in provincially uneven development. Do we want to continue with this lack luster rural focus and resulting imbalance into the "teen" decade? Is there a willingness within "upper tiers" of government to take the initiative? Is there sufficient desire at at the grassroots and at the local and regional leadership levels to follow the lead of other provinces and other countries to make long-term, systemic investment for rural – and provincial – economic success?

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About the author:

GEORGE PENFOLD is the Regional Innovation Chair (RIC) in Rural Economic Development at Selkirk College in Castlegar, BC and Adjunct Professor at the School of Business and Economics at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC. In 2005 the Real Estate Foundation of BC contributed $100,000 to the RIC endowment fund at Selkirk College as part of its support for sustainable community planning and informed development in the greater Kootenay region. George is a regular contributor to CITinfoResource.com.

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