What do we value about rural life?

The next time you hear the words, “Rural Sustainability”, stay awake. What those words really refer to is the possibility that our rural way of life is on the way out. A positive take on this idea, of course, is to keep repeating the magic mantra: shop locally. Spending our money at local businesses is a big part of keeping our local economy strong. Many of us remember when there were many shops at which to while away a Saturday. Nowadays, we are more apt to prepare a list of what we cannot find as a justification to head out of town to the city, where we willfully overlook the true cost of our out-of-town purchasing.
Being independent is becoming a risky business in every sense. Insurance costs, purchasing small amounts of supplies instead of gargantuan orders spread among several small businesses, staffing costs and more all contribute to the practicality of having one big location and maintaining smaller, bare-bones satellite offices in rural areas.
As one of an ever-dwindling number of independent newspapers, we know about buy-outs and know that there is a really short waiting list of buyers for independent newspapers.
We have watched as local independent companies celebrate a milestone anniversary and then close down. No buyers. We have watched as strong companies surge ahead to buy up their competition. School boards have merged. Municipalities have merged.
And this week, we tell you about the threats facing independent school bus operators, as the Ontario government prepares to proceed with its plan to start tendering school bus services.
Independent operators fear that large bus companies will bid low and gradually squeeze out the smaller, local companies. Once the competition is knocked out of the marketplace, transportation costs will go up and there will be few choices left for taxpayers.
Business, of course, is about money. But a time will come, perhaps, when we do not want to be held hostage by companies who have eliminated the competition to have the ultimate control over pricing.
It is understandable that many of the government’s decisions must be business decisions. But it is hard to swallow that on the one hand, we are told that our government is doing what it can to ensure rural sustainability even while many of the controls over our own way of life are already removed and continue to be removed.
On top of this, rural areas are undergoing what the province calls “intensification”. It is what we used to call “built up”. And this intensification is happening all around us with seemingly little support or advice from the province in terms of planning.
Should we be concerned about rural farmland being used for residential purposes? Or is there plenty of land left?
Municipal and government buildings go up with what seems like little consideration for future energency efficiency.
Subdivision plans focus on current quality of life for the residents, but don’t consider proximity to stores and services, the option of public transportation or the prohibitive cost of providing a municipal water system to a handful of homes hooking onto a larger municipal water source.
Heaven forbid we would ever say to people moving to a rural area that they should expect to use dirt roads, dig their own wells, endure twice-monthly garbage pick-up and not expect the snow to be cleared until after 9 a.m.
We can talk about rural sustainability until the cows come home, but really, these days, most cows are indoors year-round, so even that is not much of an issue any more.
What is important is to find out if what we expect from rural life is practical. We need to get our elected officials to look ahead and see what is affordable and realistic for rural residents and when we find out what that is, we have to be prepared to live with it.
At the risk of using a cliché, maybe it is time to go back to basics. What do we want? What do we need? What is reasonable? If we are smart about protecting the best of what we have, we can come out ahead – by a country mile.                                                                     L.S.