Vital Signs report highlights differences between urban and rural N.L.

For its third edition, Vital Signs headed outside of town.

The annual report, whichanalyzesquality of life issues in Newfoundland and Labrador communities, this year comparedurban and rural regions in the province, providing a snapshot of shared and divergent concerns in the different areas.

"When you look at the geography of the province, and the urban concentration in some regions, the much more remote, and those that are in between, they're all facing different realities," saidRob Greenwood of Memorial University's Harris Centre, which produces the report in collaboration with the Community Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador.

"So when we think of public policy, when we think of service provision, when we think of volunteer support, one size does not fit all."

Some residents face 'big disadvantage'

"One of the sections that we focused on was housing, because it's an issue that hits people where they live," saidAinsleyHawthorn of the Community Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador.

"The statistic that really jumped out at me was the proportion of people's income that they spend on utilities."

The difference is really staggering, and it puts low-income residents in Newfoundland and Labrador at a big disadvantage.- Ainsley Hawthorn

While households with the highest incomes in Newfoundland and Labrador spend close to the Canadian average oftheir income on utilities 2.76 per cent, compared with 2.42 per cent nationally the lowest-income households in the province spend a much greater proportion of its income on utilities: 8.69 per cent versus 4.31 per cent across Canada.

"Thedifference is really staggering, and it puts low-income residents in Newfoundland and Labrador at a big disadvantage," she said.

'A drain of youth'

The report notes that while Newfoundland and Labrador is again seeing more people leaving the province than coming to the province, after several years of an in-migration increase, residents of the province itself are steadily leaving rural areas to move to the northeast Avalon, which will have significant consequences.

"Particularly what we see is a drain of youth," said Hawthorn. "The people who are migrating inward to St. John's, the urban centre, are mostly young people, and it means there's a more limited labour force in rural areas."

There are fewer people to serve on city and town councils; a full 25 per cent of the province's municipalities were unable to fill all positions in the 2013 election.

"You can really see that as rural communities in the province lose their youth to the northeast Avalon, that's having a real effect in terms of what they're able to achieve in their communities."

In addition, overall in the province K-12 enrolment in 2015 was 66,800,just 41 per cent of the province's peak enrolment of 162,818 in 1971, when Newfoundland and Labrador's population was comparable to today.

• Read the entire Vital Signs report here

The report was released online Tuesday andwill be available in print formin TC newspapers across the province, beginning with the Telegram on Saturday.

"The whole intent is for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, and organizations, business, labour, non-governmental organizations, to have access to good, easy to understand information," said Greenwood, "and to know where to turn to get morefollowupon that information, so that we can have really engaged, informed public debate on the issues that affect our lives."