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'Change is necessary;' Saskatchewan's long-standing rural-to-urban shift poses challenges. https://thestarphoenix.com/news/local-news/change-is-necessary-saskatchewans-long-standing-rural-to-urban-shift-poses-challenges
@thinktankSK provides a valuable update to some important rural:urban analysis that has been ongoing for some time in #skpoli
I will add an overlay to responding to a number of points he has raised in the story.
I will add an overlay to responding to a number of points he has raised in the story.
The bringing of former Premier Romanow into the story provides an anchor but glides over some key points. 1.The NDP's distancing from its CCF (Farm-Labour-Fabian) rural roots accelerated with the formation of the NDP, largely an urban labour party. #skpoli
2. The Conservatives under Premier Devine accelerated this trend and drove a political wedge between rural and urban voters with large grants to the ag community and programs like Fair Share SK (moving urban jobs into rural communities). #skpoli
3. The Romanow govt, arguably no longer social-democratic-socialist in the CCF sense of it, inherited the political management of a province that was bankrupt in all but name. It used this fiscal challenge as the rationale to rewrite the delivery of service to rural #skpoli.
4. Romanow did rationalize rural health care under a thinly veiled ideological remake but also at the same time closed the Plains Hospital in Regina, originally established as a urban hospital for rural #skpoli residents
5. Rural #skpoli was truly at its roots a product of geopolitical (US expansion) and economic (railway) interests. The communities that emerged did not form organically but as a product of the RR (a town every 7 miles) and the grain economy.
6. Urbanization is as @thinktankSK pointed out ongoing in #skpoli as it is elsewhere to the point 1/3 of SK population can be considered rural as of the last census, even if SARM may like another definition that suits its political and economic interests they do get to.
7. Of course what SARM should have a discussion about is when is an Rural Municipality too small? (For example, the RM of Glen McPherson has a population of 76.) This is a political discussion but one appropriate to an organization such as SARM and #skpoli to have. #skpoli
8. While they may share some common interests, one should not conflate agriculture and farms, an economic and business sector, and rural communities a social/community construct. They are not the same. For example, 20% of farmers live in an urban environment. #skpoli
9. 27% of Farms are corporations (Agribusiness) less than 1/2 of farmers (of 24,000) earn close to 90% of all farm receipts. #skpoli
