On May 1, the major equipment dealer confirmed that the Right by You Ag Society Grant program will continue for 2023.

Four ag societies across the Prairies will be chosen this year. Each will receive $10,000 for a project “that offer[s] meaningful impact” to the community they serve, the company said.

“Agricultural societies are vital to unifying rural Canada by providing youth programs, clubs, activities and facility access that connect and strengthen communities,” a May 1 press release stated.

“The renewal of the grant program cements RME’s steadfast commitment to fostering a reliable, consistent experience through each interaction with customers and community members.”

Eligible projects must be completed within two years.

The Killarney Agricultural Society is among previous grant winners. Those funds, announced last year, were used to re-vamp the community’s public walking path.

Other 2022 winners used funds for arena exterior renovations, as well as fencing and boiler system upgrades.

In 2021, the first year of the grant, the Hamiota Agricultural society was named and used its funds for new playground equipment.

“Through our support of agriculture societies, RME is investing in the long-term development and well-being of its expansive network of communities,” said Jim Wood, the company’s chief sales and operations officer.

“The impact of agriculture societies in rural areas is deep rooted, and their longevity is crucial to the communities that we serve.”

Applications for 2023 grants will close July 30. Application forms are available through the community investment tab of the RME website.

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The Economic Developers Association of Manitoba (EDAM) has launched its newly completed, eight-module certification program, dubbed Community Edge, and the first class has graduated, following the group’s spring forum in Roblin in mid-May.

“EDAM developed a strategic plan in 2013 and recognized that professional development was an important part of what we do, so this has been a long-term pro-cess, but we knew that we wanted an education product for our practitioners that was Manitoba driven, Manitoba focused, so that it was relevant to the communities and issues that we deal with in Manitoba,” Marilyn Crewe, economic development officer for Neepawa and EDAM chair, said.

While hardly isolated to rural areas, an economic development office has become a mainstay for communities and regions across Manitoba, either to manage growth, accelerate growth or to reverse a declining trend in an area bleeding industry and residents.

“I think that one of the things that we need to understand out of our communities is, what is there already? So what are the economic drivers that are currently present?” Crewe said.

For her hometown of Neepawa, agriculture has very much driven industry. Surrounded by farmland, the community is also home to HyLife Food’s pork-processing plant — a facility that unveiled two years and $176 million of upgrades, including a new cut floor, this April — as well as the Farmery Estate Brewery, which has made a name harvesting its own malt barley on site.

“Neepawa is a strong agricultural community, so then part of what I do is find ways to support that sector that is already strong, but to make sure that it has the things that it needs to continue to be prosperous,” Crewe said.

Lana Cowling-Mason, general manager of Community Futures West Interlake, echoed that message.

“Figuring out what the community’s assets are and what its competitive advantage is and building around that is so important and having a strategy that fully deals with that and making sure that everybody understands that any of this kind of development is a long-term investment in the community,” she said. “There’s no magic bullet that solves all the problems in the area.”

At the same time, Cowling-Mason said, municipal amalgamation has impacted how development offices are structured, and problems like budget constraints are evergreen.

“The other thing that we see is such a huge variety of the state the community is in when it decides (on) the investment in economic development,” she said. “So we have some small rural communities that are seeing some challenges about retaining population, retaining business. They kind of looked at it as, here is a way to invest in a kind of stop-gap measure to try and slow down concerns that they have. But we’ve also got communities that are booming and they need to have the economic development piece to help manage the growth that they’re in.”

Those different stages will come with a different ideal choice for development officer, Crewe said.

Community Edge does not isolate farm or rural issues, although Crewe says they are woven into the general topics of the program.

An overview of the program includes, in part, how to set up a community economic development office from the ground up, developing strategies according to community demographics and priorities, business retention and expansion, tourism, communication, strategic planning, marketing and project management.

“If it’s a rural community, if it’s an urban community, these core competencies will help them to do their job better and build stronger communities that have a base of their economy that is true to the community,” Crewe said.

EDAM is pushing elected officials, administrators and other public figures, including local members of the chamber of commerce, to also take the first modules of the program, something they say may help ease the bridge between community and economic development officer.

The May forum also recognized a second cohort who has passed EDAM’s equally new “training the trainers” program in the hopes they will help guide other economic development officers in the province moving forward.

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That’s according to a draft strategy proposing some ideas for grappling with a system of too many groups working with neither a shared vision nor goals.

What’s developed over time is now a “confusing landscape of programs and services” that many potential entrepreneurs see as not only difficult to understand but to even gain access to, the report says.

The Rural Economic Develop­ment Strategy, discussed in Brandon by municipal officials last week, identifies a “very crowded landscape” of multiple departments and organizations now funding or conducting activities in economic development.

It’s reached a point where many see it not merely as cumbersome and bureaucratic, but actually impeding the goal of advancing rural development, said the report’s co-chair.

“The No. 1 thing we heard is there’s certainly a lot of duplication of programs, and a lot of confusion,” said Joe Masi, who is also executive director of the Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM).

“A really big theme in all of this was certainly about trying to co-ordinate rural economic development better.”

‘We’ is the group of nearly a dozen stakeholders that sat down in late fall, under the direction of the provincial minister of agriculture, to scrutinize the delivery of economic development services and propose ideas for improving it.

The AMM was part of a group that also included Manitoba Chambers of Commerce, the Rural Development Institute, Aboriginal organizations, the Economic Developers Associa­tion of Manitoba (EDAM) and others.

But the key thrust of the draft report, now circulating for further comment, isn’t new to AMM itself.

In 2009 it released its own review of service delivery, citing municipal governments’ growing concern about a plethora of federally and provincially funded development corporations, plus dozens of locally funded community development corporations, all trying to promote business development at the same time, and often overlapping duplicating the other’s efforts.

“There’s a lot of similar themes in this,” said Masi. “The difference is that one was ours, and this time the province brought together a group of stakeholders to work through some of the challenges.”

The draft document, completed just before the provincial blackout ahead of the election, is posted on MAFRD’s website.

One of the key directions is for a “single window” or “one-stop shop” service for economic development be created, Masi said.

This isn’t about wiping the slate clean on existing agencies and groups, but rather creating a co-ordinating “backbone agency” to bring more coherence, co-ordination and focus to what everyone is doing, Masi said.

The strategy also calls for improved training and professionalization of economic development officers, and for expanding information to help communities better identify priority industries and opportunities in their areas.

There is also a need for local government leaders to get up to speed on the issues related to economic development. Ironically, even as a plethora of programs exists there is also “limited awareness, capacity and capability in many rural communities about economic development,” the report also says.

Rivers community leader Donna Morken, who co-chaired the report, said many local government leaders themselves are confounded by it all and there are some who don’t even really understand what economic devel­op­ment is. It’s more than just business development and job creation, she said.

“I think in some cases councils believe if you hire an EDO (economic development officer) you’re going to have six new businesses tomorrow. It doesn’t happen that way,” she said.

Many communities “… do not have the resources and/or population to grow and expand at the rate that is necessary for long-term sustainability,” the report says, which points to this need for more collaboration between communities and regions.

Or, as Morken says, “… some communities have economic development officers, some don’t.”

Masi said AMM has a role to play in getting its members to make economic development a higher priority.

The report was put together in a matter of weeks, and doesn’t include detail on how to implement a co-ordinating agency, or what it would look like, Masi said.

“At some point it will be a final document and will be discussed with the province,” he said.

“Our committee is hoping after the provincial election to meet with the new minister, wherever this is housed under, and make them aware of what the report says. Hopefully it was written in such a way that whoever forms the next government takes it seriously, and doesn’t just scrap it and start over.”

The strategy also describes the current state of rural Manitoba’s economy and lays out some goals for rural development. Thirty-five per cent of Manitoba’s total GDP is generated from outside of the Winnipeg region, contributing over $16 billion to the provincial economy. There are approximately 12,000 businesses in rural Manitoba.

“While it is important that rural Manitoba offers excellent health care and that social services are provided to those who need them, it is understood that growth in private sector businesses and the resulting jobs is indicative of a strong economy,” the document says.

The strategy has set a goal of increasing the rural population by 150,000 and establishing 3,000 new businesses by 2025.

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Manitoba’s Agriculture, Food and Rural Develop­ment Minister Ron Kost­yshyn announced the formation of the Rural Economic Development Steering Com­mittee last week.

Over the next few months, he said, the committee will consult on and draft a Rural Economic Development Strategy and Action Plan for Manitoba.

“Rural development in Manitoba contributes to strong local economies,” he said in a release. “There are many groups invested in the success and prosperity of rural communities, and they are coming together to create a development plan for our future.”

The committee was proposed by the Association of Manitoba Municipalities which has long called for a review of economic development service delivery, concerned with what local leaders see as a piecemeal approach.

The AMM in 2009 released its own task force report, pointing to a plethora of organizations, including federally funded Community Futures Development corporations, provincially funded regional development corporations, and nearly 100 separate locally funded community development corporations — all mandated for economic development, but with overlapping responsibilities, leading to duplication of efforts.

The province has since replaced funding for regional corporations with a new Partners 4 Growth program, but AMM continued to call for a comprehensive, long-term plan.

Joe Masi, executive director of the AMM, will co-chair the new committee with Donna Morken, a community leader from Rivers.

“The goal is to really look at this with a holistic approach so that we can develop a co-ordinated strategy that all stakeholders can buy into,” Masi said.

Such a strategy will identify needs and opportunities and include areas such as infrastructure, technology, labour skills and housing, according to MAFRD.

The committee identifies “rural Manitoba” as areas other than Winnipeg — that is, all cities, towns, villages, rural municipalities, First Nations and communities other than those in northern Manitoba.

Committee members represent a range of Man­itobans with expertise in economic development, includ­ing representatives from Brandon’s Rural Development Institute and chambers of commerce from rural and Aboriginal communities.

Masi said they hope to produce a draft report by year’s end.

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The State of Rural Canada 2015, details the multiple and serious challenges facing rural regions including depopulation, aging infrastructure, lack of access to health care and education, and centralized decision-making.

These represent nothing less than the erosion of the foundation of both Canadian society and economy, the 103-page report, produced by the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation (CRRF) and the Rural Policy Learning Commons, an international network funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, says.

It’s a first-of-its-kind report intended to put the needs and issues of rural Canada in front of federal leaders with recommendations for advancing rural development across the entire country, says CRRF president Al Lauzon, a professor of rural development and environmental design at University of Guelph.

“I think rural is sometimes seen as irrelevant,” said Lauzon.

Rural Canada has increasingly taken a ‘back seat’ in federal policy development, and is viewed by policy-makers more as a series of sectors such as agriculture and forestry, he said.

• Editorial: Let’s face it

Yet, this increasing focus on sectoral policy for key industries has led to the loss of capacity for understanding rural Canada. Fundamentally, we have lost a vision for rural Canada, he said, adding that policy-makers now also tend to have an urban bias, further clouding their ability to understand the interdependent needs and issues of rural Canadians.

The 2013 decision by the federal government to shut down the Rural Secretariat was a pivotal moment, revealing how senior governments have come to view non-urban areas, Lauzon said.

“It really speaks to how the government of the day was looking at rural,” he said. “They’ve lost what I would describe as a means to develop ground intelligence about what’s going on in rural communities.”

The elimination of the long-form mandatory census has been another blow to rural communities and organizations, reducing the data needed to inform decision-making and policy, the report says.

The report finds that rural Canada faces a mix of demographic, economic and social challenges including an aging population and a need to provide new development opportunities for younger workers. And while it has proven itself to be highly innovative, drawing on strong social ties, and doing more with less, it cannot continue to pursue community and economic development without supports.

“Government policy has to create what I would call enabling conditions for communities… to mobilize their resources and assets,” said Lauzon. That does, however, require more work on rural communities’ part too.

“They need to overcome what I would describe as regional animosity between communities, and find ways of working together,” he added.

The report provides detailed snapshots of individual provincial challenges and priorities.

Manitoba’s challenges, for example, include its uneven population growth, an aging population and workforce, and essential services at risk in places where populations are dropping.

Sectors driving this province’s rural economy have shifted from primary agriculture to wholesale and retail, manufacturing, health care, and natural resource development, the report says.

The report makes several key recommendations including developing a new and robust vision for rural Canada, increasing engagement by all rural Canadians themselves in the planning and reinvestment of their regions, and creation of a new relationship with Aboriginal communities.

In rural regions, partnerships between municipalities and Aboriginal communities can only increase opportunities in community development that will benefit from the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders, the report says.

An accompanying document, released Sept. 17 along with State of Rural Canada, includes questions Canadians who care about rural Canada are urged to ask federal leaders vying to form the next federal government, including, ‘what is your party’s perception of and vision for rural and Northern Canada?’ and, ‘how does your party plan to support sustainable rural development?’

“The authors in this report make it clear that there is nothing inevitable about rural decline. Where it is occurring, it is largely intentional by virtue of what we choose to do or not to do in our policy decision-making,” the report says.

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For small towns, it can make the difference between new people wanting to come and live there — or looking elsewhere.

Souris and Minnedosa both jumped at the chance to take part this summer in an ongoing program pairing Manitoba towns to help them learn what sort of impression they leave on visitors.

They were participants in the First Impressions Community Exchange, a Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Development program designed to help towns see their own strengths and shortcomings through fresh pairs of eyes.

Souris and Minnedosa, Niverville and Stonewall, and Portage la Prairie and Dauphin, were matched in 2014 as communities of approximately the same size population and sharing other similarities.

Each participating town sent a team of delegates to the other’s, to evaluate, using a handbook provided by MAFRD, and log their outsider’s take on the other’s community.

Minnedosa was eager to get an unbiased assessment of the town, says Ross Mackling, a local business owner. You tend not to see certain things, or are unaware of others until someone new brings them to your attention, he said.

“It seemed like a really good opportunity to have another set of eyes come and view what we kind of take for granted here, and give us maybe a new fresh perspective on things,” he said.

Visiting delegates to each respective town assessed everything from esthetic appeal to availability of housing and recreational opportunities, services and infrastructure, said Vern May, the economic development officer with the Souris and Glenwood Community Development Corporation.

“They were looking at everything from signage, to the smells, sights, sounds in the community, whether it’s welcoming, the placement and quality of schools and services, landscaping, public infrastructure like sidewalks and curbs,” he said.

Souris got high marks on many fronts. Delegates said while Souris is best known for its historic swinging bridge, it has far more to offer. The hours and variety of local restaurants received praise, as did the town’s slate of unique businesses such as Sadlers Greenhouse and specialty accommodations found at The Guest Room.

Minnedosa also heard good things about why people would want to live in the town, said Mackling.

“We would hope to be viewed as a progressive and modern community that has lots of services for its residents and its visitors,” he said. “We certainly feel the lake is one of our best assets and we feel very fortunate to live in a beautiful valley and scenic location in Manitoba. Their visitors thought so too.

But this wasn’t merely mutual admiration exercise. Both communities also heard constructive suggestions about where they can improve their first impressions. Souris heard that it needs to improve its welcoming signage from all four directions and visitors commented that some of its storefronts are “tired looking.” The town needs to do something about a large vacant lot in its town, and it needs an industrial park, the evaluation said.

Likewise, Minnedosa was told it can improve some services to visitors, such as having restaurants keep more convenient hours, and its Main Street needed upgrading, said Mackling.

“There weren’t too many negatives, but they pointed out some tidying up needed, and some facelifts needed on some of our Main Street buildings,” he said. Minnedosa could also be doing more with social media to promote the community, he added.

“We’ve realized we’re behind in that area, and could be doing more.”

Both places will take the evaluations, now compiled into reports with recommendations, to their respective councils. They’ll be used to form action items for their respective economic development committees, chambers of commerce and other groups.

But while action areas are easy fixes, like a coat of paint, others relate to much bigger-picture issues. Overall economic development is what enables communities to be both attractive and service rich, said Mackling.

“We have the infrastructure, the schools and the hospital, the quality of life and the basic things covered,” he said. “But we are working very hard at finding opportunities to bring new industry and employment to town, and to revitalize the economy.

“I think our biggest issue is adequate housing, and along with that, jobs that can keep our young people at home and bring people in,” he said.

First Impressions Community Exchanges were initially developed in Wisconsin as a simple and low-cost community development tool. The program began in Manitoba nearly a decade ago, and has also been adapted and used in hundreds of communities throughout the U.S., Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

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