University of Guelph hosted OJS journals
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Adapting to Change: Evolving Roles and Knowledge Needs of Rural Economic Development Practitioners in Ontario
No full textRural economic development practitioners are essential in fostering prosperous economies and communities across Ontario. Over the past few decades, the role of these practitioners has evolved significantly. The COVID-19 pandemic has further reshaped how rural economies are organized, and how economic development professionals must adapt to support them. As a result, there is a growing need for updated information to better understand the evolving role of rural economic development practitioners, the skills and capacities they require to effectively support rural economies, and the formats in which they need to acquire this new knowledge. An online survey was conducted in the spring of 2025 among economic development officers working in rural local governments across Ontario. The survey gathered valuable insights into current activities, policies, strategies, and resources aimed at supporting rural economic development. The findings reveal a clear trend of increasing responsibilities and activities, coupled with limited human and financial resources. The survey also highlights key areas of knowledge necessary to support rural economies, along with the preferred formats for knowledge sharing. This analysis enhances our understanding of economic development in rural Ontario and provides insights into how to better support rural economic development practitioners
How can right to development approach reducing health care disparities? An indepth qualitative case stude in the rural Ontario Cananda
No full textGrounded in the Right to Development approach, this interpretive phenomenological study investigates how structural, cultural, and systemic barriers shape healthcare experiences in rural Oxford County, Ontario. Semi structured interviews with twenty five ethnic minority residents have been completed, and interviews with fifteen healthcare professionals are forthcoming. Resident interviews were transcribed verbatim and subjected to iterative interpretive coding in NVivo 15. This study represents the first application of the Right to Development approach in a high income liberal democracy. Themes were mapped against Right to Development tenets—guaranteed entitlements, participatory governance, and accountability linked resource allocation—to assess policy coherence and identify intervention points. Findings reveal pervasive discrimination and multiple barriers, including differential treatment of ethnic minority patients, overreliance on family physicians, inadequate service quality leading to medical errors, limited culturally competent care, long travel distances and insufficient local services, and lack of interpreter support. Community driven enablers—advocacy networks, peer support, and locally led health education—demonstrate collective resilience. Building on these insights, the EquiSynth Policy Framework operationalizes Right to Development principles by codifying rights based service entitlements, amplifying community voices through inclusive governance mechanisms, and linking resource allocation to measurable equity outcomes. By extending Right to Development scholarship into a high income liberal democracy, this research offers a practical roadmap for integrating human rights and development principles into rural health policy and fostering sustainable, equitable healthcare delivery. Future research should evaluate the EquiSynth policy’s implementation and impact across diverse rural contexts, involving longitudinal mixed-methods assessments to measure its scalability, sustainability, stakeholder acceptability, feasibility, and cost-effectiveness over time
Reconsidering and reclaiming economic development options for northern contexts: The case for decolonizing economic development approaches for rural reinvestment and sustainable rural development
No full textPersistent economic challenges encountered by northern towns and cities remain intimately connected to colonial conceptualizations of growth and approaches to economic development that are limited in their ability to produce sustainable options for population retention and economic stability. The continued favouring of rural economic development models that are premised on principles of extraction, acquisition, and expansion maintain and reproduce a limited range of options that are widely recognized as both unsustainable and ineffectual. Drawing on two northern cases that feature explicit economic development challenges of a small town and large city in northern Ontario, the authors interrogate the dynamics and impacts of the dominant colonial structures, systems and processes and their implications for constraining the identification and adoption of inclusive and sustainable alternatives. Informed by the case analysis, the paper presents a continuous quality improvement framework to systematically leverage and diversify northern rural and non-metropolitan economic development opportunities. Barriers to identifying, assessing and operationalizing northern economic development alternatives that privilege the inclusion of historically marginalized community members, leverage local knowledge, resources, and assets will be discussed. The presentation will close with recommendations for shifting from colonial to sustainable approaches to rural economic development
Shaping Regional Agriculture and Sustainability through Canadian Technology
No full textAs advanced technologies reshape the agri-food sector, Canadian ag-tech producers offer promising solutions for growers to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and address the challenge of sustainably increasing food production. However, little academic and policy research examines the leading-edge technologies that Canadian firms design for agriculture, how these solutions enable specific business advantages and sustainability benefits, or their geographic links with rural and remote farming contexts. This research project explores the landscape of Canadian ag-tech producers, including the scale and types of technologies enabling agricultural solutions, their target use cases on farms, and intended business and sustainability benefits for growers. It also investigates the relationships between ag-tech firms’ structure, management team gender diversity, and spatial context of technology production and use. We assembled a unique dataset of 202 firms based on Crunchbase, supplemented by analysis of ag-tech producer websites. Our findings identify the characteristics of firms likely to offer significant potential for business and sustainability impact in Canadian agriculture. This research can inform rural policymakers by enhancing understanding of how technology producers, regional governments, industry associations, and intermediaries can facilitate user-producer alignment to drive enhanced sustainability in agriculture
Operationalizing ‘Self-contained Labour Areas’ as a standard geography for disseminating Statistics Canada data
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