The recent senate report on rural poverty, Beyond Freefall: Halting Rural Poverty, puts its finger on many issues of poverty and decline in rural Canada.
One in particular is clear: there is no public transportation to speak of in most rural areas. The senate report observes “getting around” connects many poverty themes.
Transportation for health care and social services, job training and jobs, servicing tourism and farm businesses, getting elderly to services and to enable rural youth to enter the job market: all are vital. For the senators, not getting around constitutes a form of rural poverty. Most people have to rely on access to the private automobile. Poor people who cannot afford a vehicle are impoverished twice over. They are poor and cannot help themselves or their families. Add inflated gas prices, and the impact on rural areas is dramatic.
In reviewing the senate report, the problem with transportation appears many times in themes other than the section on rural transportation. Transportation affects almost all walks of life in rural areas and is compounded by the long distances between towns and facilities and the low population density.
Few people makes transportation for work, shopping, services, and social life a problem. The lack of a critical mass of riders makes provision of public transportation extremely difficult.
Apart from that, most rural Canadians like their cars and trucks.
The senate findings, based on more than 200 witnesses across Canada, are confirmed by research by the Rural Women Making Change CURA project at the University of Guelph.
But the senate report only scratches the surface. The Rural Women transportation project demonstrates women are likely to be disadvantaged if they do not have individual, permanent access to a vehicle. Older women are socially isolated, as are some teenage women who can only keep jobs if they accept rides from others.
Parents who drive their children everywhere to keep up with “normal” child-rearing practices are overburdened – and many claim to be more stressed by having a car than not. Transportation is a nagging problem not “owned” by any service or sector and is not championed by any one ministry or organization.
It is evident many groups would join together if a rallying cry were put forward by one leader or group. The senate report recommends a Department of Rural Affairs be formed to take a closer look at transportation. By offering a program to help communities that have a transportation service or that need help to get one started, the department could have an impact on rural people and businesses.
While not solving the poverty question, transportation services that suit local conditions and combine community interests could make a severe dint in the conditions that allow poverty to endure. A series of examples of community solutions were researched in the RWT project. The committee favored a transportation service from King’s County, Nova Scotia: “the four municipalities of King’s County co-operated to fund, implement and manage a regional public transit service that helps people get to work every day at local factories and shops.
In 2001, they partnered with neighboring Annapolis County to expand public transportation services even further.” Solutions are available at the local level, but the support needs to be provided.
Most local transportation services also require some level of regulatory support. That calls for policy at all levels to enable local groups to provide for themselves.
Solving the transportation issue could provide the first step to having a positive impact on reducing rural poverty in Canada. This is going to be especially important in an era of high gas prices.
Dr. Tony Fuller is an expert in transportation issues with Rural Women Making Change at the University of Guelph.
