The seventeenth International Comparative Rural Policy Studies (ICRPS) Summer Institute will take place in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, from June 18 to July 01, 2020. The institute will be hosted by the Rural Development Institute at Brandon University and the Brandon University Faculty of Arts. The institute will convene for fourteen days and will involve approximately Read More ...
Futures of Rural – looking ahead to 2040 Brandon University will host ICRPS in the summer of 2020. In a rapidly changing world, rural communities are faced with an increasing number of challenges and opportunities. Rural researchers, students and practitioners are working in a rural reality that regularly includes digital change, demographic change, agricultural change, Read More ...
Host The 2020 ICRPS summer institute will be held at the Brandon University, Manitoba ( 270 – 18th Street). Brandon University is a co-educational, non-denominational, government-supported institution within the Province of Manitoba. Its institutional values include personalized education, excellence in teaching and research, creativity and innovation, and community engagement and partnerships. Brandon University embraces cultural Read More ...
Innovation • People • Action The year 2020 is a great time to look ahead and explore what change might look like in the year 2040. Future of Planning Rural Regions – How do we plan for the future of rural? Is it interconnected with urban counterparts, while at times frustrated by urban-centred thinking and policy? Read More ...
Futures resources
ICRPS 2020 will include discussions and reflections of what rural means and how it differs in ICRPS member countries. Rural Manitoba and rural Canada examples will help provide understanding of rural definitions, issues, challenges and opportunities along with identifying specific rural policies or government agencies focused on rural. Below are some future of rural resources, grouped under themes:
In the past 50-100 years, we have created immense prosperity. In 2019, global GDP is expected to reach almost US$ 90,000 billion, compared to just over US$ 1,000 billion at the start of the previous century. Economic growth and globalization have brought enormous prosperity for many: global life expectancy, for instance, has doubled since then. In many ways, our lives have never been better, which applies to many, though not to all. Still, there is a cost as well: today, the wealthiest 1 billion people use nearly half of global resources and produce the same percentage of global waste. However, we don’t live on this planet with 2 billion people, but with more than 7 billion. This inequality isn’t sustainable. Read More>>
If we’ve learned anything in the tech world over the last decade, it’s the folly of not taking the long view. So the start of a new decade seems like a good time to talk “big picture” with Lord Martin Rees, one of the world’s most prominent scientists.
His most recent book is called “On the Future: Prospects for Humanity.” In a full-episode interview, Sir Martin and Nora don’t just look decades ahead, but also millions of years into human future. Click here to listen to the podcast.
They come for the trees. It is 2038. As the rest of humanity struggles through the environmental collapse known as the Great Withering, scientist Jake Greenwood is working as an overqualified tour guide on Greenwood Island, a remote oasis of thousand-year-old trees. Jake had thought the island’s connection to her family name just a coincidence, until someone from her past reappears with a book that might give her the family history she’s long craved. From here, we gradually move backwards in time to the years before the First World War, encountering along the way the men and women who came before Jake: an injured carpenter facing the possibility of his own death, an eco-warrior trying to atone for the sins of her father’s rapacious timber empire, a blind tycoon with a secret he will pay a terrible price to protect and a Depression-era drifter who saves an abandoned infant from certain death, only to find himself the subject of a country-wide manhunt. Read more>>
Be the change or be changed, says Nikolas Badminton, futurist and TechTour alumnus.
What does that mean for agriculture? Well, according to Badminton, it means that farmers are either going to have to adapt and evolve their practices, technology, and equipment, or someone else willing to do so will be the one farming and not them. It’s perhaps a strong message for an industry steeped in tradition like agriculture, but history shows that farmers have always been able to adapt, change, and move forward. Read more>>
A fourth agricultural revolution is underway, and Canada needs to seize it. The Internet of Farming, powered by advanced technologies like autonomous tractors and drone-mounted sensors, is already transforming the way we produce food. But this new generation of agriculture will take a new generation of skills, too. Canada is poised to meet that challenge. No other country has as much land, water or market access — or the education system to develop farmers and food producers who can thrive in a hyper-connected, data-driven economy. And yet our share of global exports is falling and productivity of our farms stalling.Read more>>
Newcomers to Canada often settle in our biggest cities, but the federal government wants to help immigrants move to fill labour gaps in smaller towns and rural communities. The small city of Winkler, Man., has been doing just that for years. Nina Pinlac-Manuguid and her husband Randolph moved there, opening a restaurant and joining the city’s success story of supporting and retaining newcomers. Listen to segment here.
John Stackhouse spent close to 25 years at the Globe and Mail, first as a foreign correspondent, editor of Report on Business and then finally, Editor-in-Chief at the newspaper. Today, he’s a Senior Vice-President, office of the CEO at the Royal Bank of Canada where he advises leadership on emerging trends in the Canadian economy, with a particular focus on technological change and innovation in this age of disruption. He’s also the author of 3 books, with a fourth coming out in April.
But John just returned from the “crazy, unique thing” that is Davos and so we’re going to talk about the business community, what role it’s playing positively or negatively and what role it can play in addressing the great problems of the world. And more specifically, we’ll get into climate change and how we need to reframe the energy transition as an opportunity for business, and finally the case for reshaping capitalism. Click here to listen to podcast.
This research builds on previous research conducted over the past several decades, including Environics’ Focus Canada, and the “Portraits of Canada” studies conducted by the Centre for Research and Information in Canada (CRIC). This new survey will update selected key opinion indicators, as well as mark a fresh starting point in focusing on emerging issues facing the country’s future. This study is intended to establish a new benchmark – the first in a series that will explore Canadian public opinion on the confederation of tomorrow as the early 21st century unfolds. Read more>>
With Canada’s population increasingly concentrated in a small number of large metropolitan areas, the question often arises: do the values, interests and concerns of citizens in cities differ from those of their counterparts living in smaller cities or towns across the country? Is there a specific metropolitan mindset or set of experiences that distinguishes those living in these major urban centres from other Canadians?
To find answers, our 2019 Confederation of Tomorrow survey was used to compare public opinion across the country’s four largest metropolitan areas – Montreal, Toronto, Calgary-Edmonton (combined) and Vancouver – with that of people living in the rest of their respective provinces, and that of the rest of the Canadian population as a whole. Read more>>
As sawmills across B.C. shut down or curtail operations, hundreds of people are losing their jobs and communities are losing the major source of their economic growth.
This week on Daybreak we take a closer look at how we got here and what needs to change. Read more>>
Economic profiles provide an overview of the economic landscape within a defined region. This information can help inform strategic economic development initiatives and evaluate the desirability of an area for investment opportunities. The data and analysis presented in these reports provide basic information about the economy of a region. Reports contain demographic, job and business data. Read more>>