To be honest, I likely would have ignored a press conference yesterday some senators held to address rural poverty but, two days ago, when Canwest's political editor saw the notice for the press conference, he encouraged me to attend and his instincts were spot on. Our coverage ran in National Post, The Vancouver Sun , The Ottawa Citizen , The Edmonton Journal , The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, and The Nanaimo Daily News.
OTTAWA – The federal government should send thousands of its employees to live and work in rural Canada, says a Senate committee studying the issue of rural poverty.
In a sweeping report with 68 recommendations aimed at revitalizing rural Canada, senators also said a new Department of Rural Affairs ought be created; that financial support for a host of rural programs should be increased; and that hedge funds and commodity traders be investigated to see what, if any, role they are playing in driving up fuel and energy prices.
They also recommend that FedNor, the federal government corporation set up to spur economic development in northern Ontario, take responsibility for economic development in the entire province.
“It is time to address rural-urban disparities,” said Alberta Senator Joyce Fairbairn, the chairwoman of the standing Senate committee on agriculture and forestry . . . [Read the rest]
One of the big concerns this committee of Liberal and Conservative senators had was that they believed that rural Canada had lost any political clout and that Ottawa was ignoring rural issues. I asked Liberal MP Wayne Easter about this. Easter was candid about the federal government's perceived inaction on rural issues but he also noted, quite rightly I think, that others need to pay attention:
I don’t mind admitting at all that I do think there should have been more emphasis by the previous government of which I was a part of on rural Canada and there certainly should have been by this government.
And I’ll say this very clearly as well, the media that are around here pay no attention to agriculture and rural issues. It’s a problem in the news centres in Toronto and other places that those major resource industries are not paid enough attention to in terms of their problems and solutions by the national media itself. So I think it spreads right through this town, not just with the political parties but also with the bureaucracy and the media.
Easter wouldn't have known this when I spoke to him but I was one of just two out of 300 or so members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery that attended that press conference put on by the Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. (Other out-of-town reporters had dialed in on a conference call) The committee had just wrapped up a two-year study on rural poverty (PDF) and the cost of farm inputs and was releasing their final reports.