Rural municipalities want to discuss unity with PM
EDMONTON Organizations representing rural communities in Alberta and Saskatchewan are feeling left out after Justin Trudeau reached out to the provinces’ premiers and big-city mayors to address concerns of Western alienation.
The Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) and the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) are asking the newly re-elected prime minister not to forget about those in the Prairies living outside of major urban centres.
“The City of Edmonton and the City of Calgary do not represent all of Alberta,” said Al Kemmere, the RMA’S president and a councillor in Mountain View County.
“They do represent a significant portion, but a third of the province is still outside of Calgary and Edmonton.”
According to 2016 Canada census data, 16.4 per cent of Albertans and 33.2 per cent of Saskatchewanians live in rural areas, and just under half of Albertans live outside of Calgary and Edmonton.
Both provinces’ rural municipalities associations are asking for a seat at the table for conversations about national unity.
The call follows a federal election that saw all 14 federal ridings in Saskatchewan and all but one of Alberta’s 34 ridings — Edmonton Strathcona, taken by New Democrat Heather Mcpherson — won by Conservative candidates.
With the Liberals losing all four of the seats they held previously in the two provinces, the governing party was left without a single representative in the region.
“We need to have rural people at the table, too, because we don’t have representation right now,” said Ray Orb, the president of the SARM. “If the prime minister is able to meet with (Saskatoon and Regina), we’d like to either be at the same meeting or we’d like to have our own conversation.”
Kemmere and Orb both expressed that they didn’t intend to sow the seeds of any Western separation, or “Wexit.” Instead, they said they wanted to tell the prime minister about concerns they have related to topics like agriculture, pipelines and the carbon tax.
“It’s exactly opposite to separatism,” Kemmere said. “This is all about getting (Trudeau) to understand what takes place in the rural landscapes so that we can do something to develop mutual benefits from our policies instead of having this big, political divide that’s in place now.”