The rural municipality in Canada: A critical overview of recent research and some perspectives on the development agenda.

This municipality invested in an innovative and timely multi-community collaboration for broadband internet services delivery, involving some four municipalities and five First Nations - a collaborative approach celebrated in the annals of rural development (e.g., Beattie & Annis, [4]; Korsching et al., [43]), and currently being rearticulated in so-called New Regionalism (Daniels et al., [15]). And if the senior government subscribes to moving its constitutionally corralled local government mandate more and more toward "community government" (Douglas, [19]; Tindal, [69]), then the principle of subsidiarity, and the requisites of devolution, endogeneity, and increased self-government, will be the guiding lights here. A further contrast is with the Netherlands where the status of local government in a highly decentralized country is evidenced by the fact that the personnel resources employed by local government are some 60% higher than the entire national government (VNG, [73]). This trajectory has taken us from a thoroughgoing colonial enterprise facilitating the agendas of European geopolitical and mercantile interests relating to resources exploitation, settlement, and the secure reproduction of power structures, via a colonial government, and then the Federal and Provincial governments, through to the post-war maturation of a more independent welfare state and the rapid urbanization of Canadian society, on to today's conditions in a highly globalized, technologically driven world. The founding role of these municipalities, as a provincially sanctioned agency to provide services to property, such as roads maintenance and water and sewage services has, for most municipalities, been transformed to a locally responsible government that is now expected to deliver a diverse range of services to people, community organizations, local businesses, international industrial corporations, and others. [Extracted from the article]