From tariffs to crime, where do rural communities want election action?

There's many issues front of mind in the federal election campaign, but industry leaders say rural communities aren't getting enough focus.

There’s less than two weeks left in the federal election campaign, but while the parties have put out various announcements, some industry leaders and experts say rural communities are being left out.

About 20 per cent of Canadians live in rural, remote, Indigenous, coastal or northern communities, according to Rural Economic Development Canada.

These communities are facing many of the same issues as their urban counterparts: health care shortages, crime rates and the impact of tariffs on important sectors.

The way those issues impact rural communities, though, can be very different.

“They’re discussing it as if how it looks and what the solutions would be are going to be the same in all places, which is incorrect,” said Sarah-Patricia Breen, the B.C. innovation chair in rural economic development at Selkirk College.

She said the issue comes with the data used to craft policies, often gathered from urban areas and utilized by policymakers living in urban communities.

“We end up, particularly in a federal election, and oftentimes provincial ones, with these universal issues being discussed in this one-size fits all way and that trend towards these programs being based on data that’s primarily urban by people who are primarily urban,” Breen said.

“We end up with an entire suite of policies and programs that make no sense across rural Canada.”