The Role Of Urbanization In Canada

Every day, states are shaped and reshaped by internal and external forces. These changes amount to both cultural and political changes. Few changes, however, have brought forth the shift we have witnessed, and continue to witness, from urbanization. Urbanization has shifted the balance of political power within Canadian politics even further towards cities, creating an even wider urban-rural divide, while simultaneously connecting rural and urban regions more. This essay will focus on the consequences of this population movement and growth, analyzing how this has effected the allocation of electoral districts, the urban-rural political cleavage, and the urbanization of Indigenous people. Urbanization is both the movement of people from urban

Conservatives depend on rural ridings to consistently vote in their favour, but in practice this is less clear cut. In 2004, rural voters were surveys to have a 14% higher chance of favouring the Conservative party than urban voters (Roy et al., 113, 2015). Urbanization, and of course immigration, has toned down this extreme partisan preference. In the most recent federal election, 2015, the Liberal party, led by Justin Trudeau, won one third of all rural seats. The Conservatives, on the other hand, won 70, or 46%, of rural ridings, as defined by Maclean’s (Taylor-Vaisey, 2015). This was a downturn in Conservative election results in rural ridings, a bloc which has seen downturn in recent years. Perhaps this is connected to the increasing in commuting which is seen from rural to urban areas, and the further economic dependency which rural areas have on urban areas (Ali et al., 250, 2011). This is a possible consequence of urbanization, but there appears to be a lack of writing on the topic

Of the former, the answer appears to be no. If a concentration is defined by a neighbourhood with over 50% of residents identifying themselves as a person of Indigenous decent, only one such Canadian urban neighbourhood – in Winnipeg – would qualify (Peters, 169, 2010). Indigenous people are obviously not evenly distributed among urban neighbourhoods, as few ethnic groups are, but the lack of apparent segregation is a generally positive finding. In the most recent federal election, 2015, 10 people identifying themselves as people of Indigenous descent were elected to Parliament (Fontaine, 2015). Of these 10, 5 represent ridings which can be defined as rural, and 5 which are urban. However, this is only 3% of the total 338 seats in Parliament (Fontaine, 2015), while 5% of people in Canada are Indigenous (Statistics Canada, 2016). Even though this is below equal demographic representation of Indigenous people in the House of Commons, it remains a positive sign. As of 2006, 53.2% of Indigenous people resided in urban areas, with the other 46.8% living on reserve or in rural areas (Statistics Canada, 2008). Thus, the 5 Indigenous Members of Parliament from urban areas and 5 Members of Parliament from rural areas shows that both urban and rural Indigenous people are being represented