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Wednesday, 13 February 2008 |
In honour of its centennial year, the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties (AAMD&C) will host a nationwide rural symposium, Rural Matters! Forging Healthy Canadian Communities.
By Sharon Ulrich
Taber Times
While the symposium intends to give communities the tools needed to raise prospects, it also plans to raise awareness of rural Canada, its lifestyle and the key role it plays not only provincially, but nationally.
"It's real satisfying to be able to raise the profile of rural communities right across Canada and in particular, in Alberta," AAMD&C president Don Johnson remarked. "To give them a voice, to put in their hands tools that will enable them to know how to deal with government, increase their capacity to highlight to the rest of the municipalities, our larger urban cousin and to the public as a whole, the key fundamental role that rural communities play in the economy of this country and the fabric of this nation as a whole."
Where he sat on the task force for Alberta's Rural Development Strategy, Johnson said he tried to take the key principles that were involved in the development of that program and expand them to a national level, to assist smaller outlying communities in the nation's rural areas.
He stressed the definition of rural across Canada is a little different in Alberta because where AAMD&C strictly represents municipal districts and counties, and the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) represents everything from villages up, Barnwell and Taber are considered urban.
However, as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is one of the key co-sponsors, he indicated such communities with populations of 10,000 and under situated in rural areas would likely benefit from the symposium.
Set to take place at the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton, the four-day symposium in July will focus on governance and sustainability, infrastructure, the economy, industry and the environment in rural communities, with added focus on Aboriginal and youth populations. With key-note speakers and academics from across the country invited to attend, Johnson noted there will be a whole range of topics covered.
"We've got some of the key minds that have written major papers on rural-urban interphase and rural challenges, about legislation, governance, the environment, municipal water, wastewater on a regional basis."
What they want to do, Johnson said, is sensitize federal and provincial governments of the real challenges of outlying rural communities.
"When I see some of the documentation of the federal gas tax rebate, it sounds great, we're all going to get five cents a litre going to go back to the municipalities - a lot of money. Some of them can't access it because they can't fill out the forms, and there's a fairly onerous requirement to do that."
Workshops in the aforementioned areas will offer presentations and provide materials and facilitators who normally negotiate and work with municipalities across the province. Johnson noted they also want people to come in with ideas of their own.
"We're trying to bring rural municipal leaders from right across Canada, gather them together, have them roll up their sleeves and go to work for four days."
Information gathered at the workshops will then be taken and used as a tool for municipalities and as documentation to be put forth to the government.
"Over the next few months following, we're going to put together a specific action plan that we can take and put in front of government. We're going to arm our rural municipalities with some tools to know how to deal with legislation, to know how to deal with economic development."
He explained there has been such a movement over the last 50 years, and noted we were once a more rural society than now, and even moreso 100 years ago, in particular. That said, he questioned how a community can keep young people at home in their outlying communities, an issue likely to be addressed at the symposium.
"If you're graduating from high school at W.R. Myers in Taber, what are the prospects that those kids are going to stay in Taber? I had two sons that wanted to farm and the prospects aren't real good for them in agriculture," said Johnson, who noted his oldest son is now a chemical engineer in Las Vegas, while his youngest studies to be a teacher at the University of Lethbridge.
Municipal, provincial and federal governments have to work together on behalf of their citizens and address challenges of rural areas across the country, he noted.
"At the end of the day, and I really feel keenly about this, we've got a responsibility to our ratepayers and we need to arm our municipalities with best practices and AAMD&C, I think, has been at the forefront of a lot of that," said Johnson, with anticipation of the upcoming symposium. "In simple terms, it's to give people hope in rural Canada in our rural communities, to arm them with some tools so they can go and work with provincial and federal government folks to get the resources that they need to be able to provide services for their community."
For more information on Rural Matters! Forging Healthy Canadian Communities, visit www.ruralmatters.ca, or contact Johnson at 223-1517 or (780) 955-3639. |
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