Connor Shaw is a Saskatchewan-based writer who is seeking practical solutions for wide-spanning issues facing the country.Over the last decade, a trend has become increasingly apparent across Canada: centralization. We are steadily seeing the levers of power drift away from regional centres of influence and toward centralized government institutions. This has become readily apparent in the news cycle with the proposed “comprehensive zoning bylaw” in Cowichan Valley, British Columbia.The Cowichan Valley Regional District proposed a bylaw to consolidate various zoning bylaws across the district in order to cut administration costs. This decision was met with significant scrutiny and outcry from the rural residents affected by the consolidation, fearing that their ability to keep livestock and grow food would be restricted.However, consolidation is not just a threat to independent living. The far more insidious aspect of consolidation has been occurring across Canada for years, and its consequences are already becoming apparent. Moving these centres of power away from direct public access reduces people’s influence over the institutions that define their culture and way of life.Throughout Canada, rural libraries, governments, and schools are being absorbed into larger associations — often administered in cities an hour or more from where the affected communities are located. Where communities once decided how to invest their tax dollars and what to teach their children, now those decisions are made by a committee that has no knowledge or immersion in the places they are governing..One result of this practice is the widespread homogenization of regional identities across the country. When communities had direct say over the outcomes of their local institutions, a unique culture emerged which was suited to the particular needs of that population — influenced by their environment and disposition.Under the centralization policy, however, different people in different regions throughout the second-largest country on Earth are seen as interchangeable units whose needs are identical. In the Cowichan Valley Regional District, there are places which are fairly urban — such as Duncan or Ladysmith — and others that are vast and full of wilderness, like North Cowichan. To act as though a house in a Duncan suburb can be effectively zoned with the same policy as a cabin deep in the Vancouver Island wilderness is simply foolish.And yet this foolishness is not an exception but swiftly becoming the rule. Whether it is found in education, where standardized curricula frequently reflect the priorities of urban centres rather than the realities of rural life; in healthcare administration, where decisions are made based on population density rather than geographic necessity; or in economic development, where investment flows toward already consolidated hubs, leaving peripheral regions to stagnate.Centralization is often billed as a cost-saving endeavour, yet the cost of a local identity is far greater than the supposed financial strain that maintaining local institutions bear. By continuing to allow the levers of power to slip from our fingers and into the hands of centralizing forces, the ability of individuals to influence the political decisions that impact us becomes far more difficult..A community is not simply a collection of people occupying the same space — it is a network of shared decisions, shared priorities, and shared constraints. These things are expressed through institutions. Schools teach what a community values. Local governments decide what is worth preserving or developing. Even zoning bylaws reflect assumptions about how people ought to live. Remove control over these institutions, and you change the fundamentals of the culture itself.For many regions, it is not too late. The most common reason cited for why centralization occurs is that nobody in the community will step up to the plate in order to govern locally. Often, this determination is made through underhanded means, such as failing to advertise vacancies. However, once the consolidation occurs, it is almost impossible to reverse.If we are to protect our rural institutions, our power to decide the fate of our own towns, and our culture, which emerges from our ways of life, then we need to make an effort to participate in what remains. Joining boards, attending town council meetings, and keeping a close eye on local politics will all contribute to the maintenance of regional authority against centralizing forces.On April 10, after facing protest and outrage, the Cowichan Valley Regional District decided to postpone their deliberations on the zoning bylaw consolidation. It is only through effective exercise of the democratic will that we can prevent irreversible changes from being made in our communities.Connor Shaw is a Saskatchewan-based writer who is seeking practical solutions for wide-spanning issues facing the country.
