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Earlier this summer, we were in Estevan, Sask., for a conference on rural innovation that started us thinking about what it means for a community to be resilient, how it can capture new opportunities and what needs to happen for innovation to thrive.
Estevan, one of 10 communities profiled by the IRPP’s Community Transformations Project, has made it clear the city wants to play a bigger role in shaping its own economic future and building a resilient local economy. But what does that mean in practice?
What does it mean to be resilient?
Gross domestic product (GDP) — the value of everything a country creates and sells — is one of the predominant metrics used when discussing the economy’s health. And yet, Simon Kuznets, who pioneered the development of GDP, explicitly warned against using it as a metric for how society is doing.
In many ways, the world is now materially much better off than it’s ever been. But even though improvements in modern living standards trend with an increase in global GDP, this measure doesn’t tell us things such as how many people still die of infectious diseases or whether water is drinkable.
So, we agree with Kuznets and take him one step further. Moving beyond GDP means re-orienting how we assign value to the foundational systems and conditions underpinning an economy. It means recognizing the value of living healthy, connected lives. And it means viewing and measuring the well-being of a community as a foundational asset that has economic value.
The economic benefits of investing in well-being
Without community well-being, sustainable long-term economic growth becomes much more difficult. Studies show that when community quality of life is low, governments pay substantially more for policing, emergency response and acute health care which drains funds away from productive, future-oriented investments.
Well-being impacts a community’s ability to develop and capture new opportunities. For instance, community health can influence participation in the economy, education can impact workforce skills and earnings potential and housing can affect access to work opportunities. Communities with strong quality of life and amenities can retain and attract talent that allows innovation to prosper.
What one factory closure tells us about building resilient communities
The underlying assumption that GDP growth is ultimately good is grounded in the idea that a growing economy lifts all boats as the tide rises. We want more people, businesses and transactions in a community, right? But this assumption loses track of the outcomes many communities want, including to be healthy, happy and connected.
To prioritize a more holistic sense of well-being, we can start by identifying a community’s ideal outcomes, assessing what resources can support that and collaborating on how to measure progress.
The challenges and opportunities of delivery
Research in Saskatchewan finds there are opportunities and challenges on the ground as municipalities begin to measure and fund well-being more concretely. Survey respondents — representing 25 per cent of the province’s municipalities — were asked about their main challenges for integrating community well-being factors into programs or policies. They reported human and financial resource constraints, lack of time, being unsure how to start, lack of data and lack of community support.
Research conducted in New Zealand suggests these challenges can be overcome with strong leadership, collaboration, open communication and embracing the lessons of success and failure of what’s come before.
What gets measured gets done
Several municipalities across Canada already have well-being strategies and plans, and Statistics Canada has many of the metrics needed to measure progress.
To formalize community metrics into strategic planning and budgeting processes, municipalities can start by collaboratively adopting a definition of what well-being means to the community and engaging community groups in prioritizing and designing local investments. To take things a step further, they could add a quality of life question to council reports, perhaps “How does this decision affect resident well-being?”
They could assemble a “well-being budget,” in which each financial choice is filtered through the lens of indicators to measure improvement.
Saskatchewan offers several examples of provincial measures that formalize focusing on well-being, including:
- Developing a provincial index modelled after the Canadian index and applying data from Statistics Canada;
- Creating community safety and well-being plans with rural communities;
- Acknowledging the unique needs of rural municipalities; and
- Supporting municipal capacity for collaboration with financial incentives such as Saskatchewan’s Targeted Sector Support Initiative.
Saskatchewan has also shown through its 2007 Planning and Development Act that provinces can effectively embed quality of life into municipal planning processes through mandatory policies on land use, housing, transportation, public safety, community services, recreation, environmental stewardship and economic development.
Provinces can work with industry to support municipal infrastructure projects such as wastewater treatment centres, hospitals and schools. They can also explore ways to allocate a larger portion of resource revenues and royalties to basic public services and other elements of well-being budgets.
Sound research underpins all these efforts. Ongoing MOUs with post-secondary institutions can provide fertile soil to track the impact of municipal policy, decision-making and budget choices. For instance, the work the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy conducted in 2022 supports the advancement of well-being in municipal policy development.
At the federal level, the government can support this approach in community planning by expanding eligibility under the direct delivery stream of the Build Communities Strong Fund to allow municipalities to solve their own challenges. They can also establish community transformation agreements with communities susceptible to economic disruption and integrate well-being metrics into expected outcomes. These agreements could co-ordinate investment and support across levels of government and build long-term resilience before a crisis occurs.
Shifting mindsets matter
As much as this approach requires a rethinking of GDP, it also requires a rethinking of community vitality. Rather than treat it as an afterthought or a responsibility of the social sector, we need to put well-being — the thriving state of humans and natural resources such as water, air and land — at the forefront of decision-making as governments decide where to spend ever-crunched public dollars not only for today, but also for the future of our communities.
