A University of Guelph Associate Professor that is studying rural resiliency, says says rural Ontario is often left out of the discussions when decision-making boards sit down.
Leith Deacon points out that the GTA and other urban centres are always well represented, as a reflection of their population.
But rural and northern Ontario are often limited to one representative.
“But then you will have John Smith the representative from rural Ontario and then you will have Mary Wilson, the representative of Northern Ontario, as if to say Northern Ontario, from the Muskokas all the way to Thunder Bay are one monolith. Obviously they're not. And that's the same when you look at rural,” said Deacon.
Deacon says they've taken a different position in Alberta, with something called red-lining, which gives rural Alberta tremendous power because of the voting distribution and where the votes can be found, as opposed to Ontario where it's all based on population.
“Maybe have more than one representative for these areas, ensure that the individual that is there to represent rural Ontario isn't there to simply represent agriculture. There is a whole bunch of resource extractive industries that are based in rural places,” added Deacon.
