The new Executive Director of the Rural Ontario Institute says there are a number of issue affecting rural Ontario that she's hoping to address in the near future.
Ellen Sinclair says the Institute recent hosted a seminar on the pandemic and its impact on rural populations.
"One of our strengths is our data collection and our research and our data analysis, so we've been focusing on the affects of COVID on rural communities and do the numbers bear out the thought that people are moving to the country."
And Sinclair says one of the drivers in that movement seems to be the number of people that are now able to work from their home.
Rural transportation was the subject of another seminar hosted by the Institute and Sinclair says a lot of regions have developed their own solutions.
"A lot of regions have developed their own solutions for rural transit and there were a lot of success stories and good examples of rural transit solutions. There seems to be not a standardized approach and not a province-wide solution."
But she says a lot rural communities are now working together on solutions that might work for their region.
Sinclair adds most of their recent webinars are still available on their web site.
