Canada’s expansive Prairie region comprises the century-old provinces of Manitoba (est. 1870) and Saskatchewan and Alberta (est. 1905). However, this super-region, one-third the size of Canada (1.96 million sq. km.), faces three significant challenges: economic diversification, deteriorating infrastructure, and climate change. But do present-day decision-makers draw on insights from the region’s collective past? A past shaped by the Hudson’s Bay Company’s (1640-1870) ownership of the region, including centuries of Indigenous First Nation bands and later Métis occupation. Then in 1870 purchased to become part of the Dominion of Canada which opened the region to immigrants from various nations. French, British and Indigenous heritage and later those of many other backgrounds make for a complex cultural milieu. The land has imbued these people with rugged individualism and community reliance. A perspective on these influences offers insight on three demands faced today.
Challenges and Historical Region Insight
Economic Diversification
The economy of the Canadian Prairies has a history of natural resource dependency, primarily exporting raw material (fur, wheat, oil, minerals). Successive waves of people migrating to the Prairies struggled with this focus on export trade. A number of economic structural issues arose – vulnerability to market downturns, tariffs, supply chain disruptions and lack of innovation. Of even greater concern was what Canadian political economist Harold Innis (1930) elaborated on in his staples theory – that over time reliance on export of natural resources concentrates wealth and power leading to economic inequality and social exclusion.
The core-periphery model has been used effectively to counter these concerns and aid diversification. Core urban centers provide investment, management, research/innovation and higher education to support the region’s rural peripheries in exploration, extraction and diversified exports. However, the urban core supports expanding rural peripheries role in the supply chain by engaging in intra-regional, value-added raw materials through manufacturing and processing. The core-periphery relationship, however, can lead to inequalities and dependency that hinder development and empowerment for those in the peripheral areas.
Infrastructure Deficiencies
Substantial infrastructure shortcomings, coupled with a declining rural population, has become dire across Canada’s Prairies. In searching for solutions, it is worth noting the link between place and people has always been about access to transportation. Beginning with European fur trading voyageurs, it centered on using waterways. Today it is primarily about highways, railways and pipelines.
In the 1880s, Canadian government officials, investors and railway executives undertook the construction of a transcontinental railway, a game-changer for populating the empty Prairie region. This was backed by a homesteading policy and marketing to those in Germany, Scandinavia, Russia and Ukraine seeking better options. Construction of main and branch line railways not only facilitated transport and trade but influenced where Prairie communities were established (Friesen, 2017).
Major changes in government subsidies and policy in the 1990s permitted the Canadian Pacific Railway (privately owned) and Canadian National Railway (government owned until 1995) to both discontinue freight service on branch lines with a low-density of shippers. The result was the sale, salvage or abandonment of thousands of kilometers of branch lines. The economic impact to rural communities was enormous. To survive, rural and Indigenous communities, cooperatives, shippers, and US holding companies acquired twenty of these lines. Unfortunately, most of the old lines require serious infrastructure rejuvenation and upgrading of rails, ties, bed, bridges, culverts, crossings, and switching.
Can a modern revisioning of the Canadian Prairies occur? Might policies and funding attract new waves of immigrants to create innovation and opportunity without displacing those already living there?
Climate Change
Global climate shifts dramatically increase weather extremes resulting in droughts, floods and wildfires. Wildfires in Canada during 2023 were the worst on record; Canada accounted for 27% of tree cover loss worldwide (MacCarthy et al., 2024). Each year national and provincial governments spend over a billion dollars on suppression, only a few million on mitigation. Of note is that those residing in the Prairie region have the knowledge, skills and desire to fill the gap in wildfire prevention. For millennia the region’s Indigenous people have practiced intentional burning to clear forests and grasslands of potential fuel, stimulate regrowth and promote bio-diversity. They have the know-how and skill necessary for low intensity, limited area and right timing for cultural burns (fires you can walk beside). This ingenuity has been passed down for generations by First Nation elders and fire keepers.
Why is this knowledge and human capital not harnessed? As the region’s shared historical experience reveals, European colonizers banned and criminalized this Indigenous practice, a pattern of systemic racism. As Hoffman et al. (2022) conclude, the disruption of Indigenous land and cultural practices have had a long-term harmful impact on the region.
Takeaway
A synthesis of the Prairie region’s collective legacy reveals opportunities and barriers which decision-makers can employ to resolve present-day problems. Of first consequence is reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people as equals. This is especially so since 40% of Canada’s Indigenous people live in the Prairies, representing 14.4% of its population. For reconciliation to transpire, barriers created by generations of structural racism, distrust, misinformation and marginalization need to be disassembled. Such reconciliation necessitates a rebalancing of power and structures (decolonization) that acknowledge Indigenous ways of knowing, thinking, feeling and being (indigenization). Addressing the complexities of indigenization is a non-Indigenous responsibility while decolonization should be guided by Indigenous peoples (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015).
Acknowledgement
This work made possible by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, “Impact of federal and provincial policies on the survival of short line freight railways serving Canada’s rural enterprises and communities.”
Offline Reference:
- Innis, H. A. (1930). The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History. Yale University Press.
Connect with the Author
Prescott C. Ensign is a Professor in the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University. He has led multi-scholar research exploring rural enterprises as well as economic and community development in sparsely populated areas. He has published books and articles on entrepreneurship, Indigenous peoples, social enterprises, and business ethics.
: Prescott C Ensign 
: ensign@wlu.ca 
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: Prescott C. Ensign