Take home messages:

1. Rural Manitoba (and Rural Canada) is growing

• not everywhere
• For Manitoba (and Canada) as a whole, the rural population is growing
• The rural share of total population is declining because
• Urban is growing faster; and due to
• Successful rural development
  • At each census, some rural areas have grown and are reclassified as urban.
  • Sometimes the re-classification is greater than the growth and thus we sometimes see fewer rural people at the end of the period, compared to the number at the beginning of the period.

2. Rural Manitoba (and Rural Canada) is:

• growing near cities (Winnipeg)
• growing less or declining away from cities
• some remote areas are growing due to higher Aboriginal birth rates and / or resource (i.e. mining) development.