Over the past five weeks, RMA’s Closing the Gap advocacy campaign has drawn on the RMA’s 2024 Rural Municipal Infrastructure Deficit Project to highlight the scale and urgency of Alberta’s rural infrastructure deficit and demonstrated how chronic underinvestment is placing rural municipalities, industries, and communities at increasing risk.
Week 5 of the campaign brings together the core themes from previous weeks, including the inequitable investment gap, the economic importance of rural roads, bridges, and utilities, the need to build long‑term resilience into rural infrastructure networks, and the RMA’s recommendations for modernizing Alberta’s approach to rural infrastructure investment.
While Closing the Gap is now fully released, advocacy efforts will continue. Maintaining the momentum of the campaign is essential, and sustained, coordinated advocacy from RMA and members alike will be critical to ensuring rural infrastructure receives the long-term attention and investment it deserves.
RMA will continue to seek provincial partnership and has requested meetings with all relevant provincial ministries to discuss the rural infrastructure deficit. To support members’ continued advocacy, RMA has also released a member toolkit with key messages, data visualizations, and guidance for engagement.
See Week 5 of our Closing the Gap campaign for the full summary and Calls to Action, and review the member advocacy toolkit to see how members can advocate for equitable investments into the rural infrastructure that powers Alberta’s economic engine.
Joseph Kay
Policy Advisor
587.689.5484
joseph@rmalberta.com
Warren Noga
Manager of Policy and Research
825.319.2285
warren@rmalberta.com