Adjusting the Funding of Community Services to Account for Remoteness

Abstract

The costs of providing social, community and health services in remote communities are potentially much higher than in non-remote communities, due to a range of factors including higher transportation and additional labour costs. Ensuring equity in service delivery requires funding to be indexed appropriately for these additional costs. The question of how to adjust funding to account for costs associated with remoteness is conceptually and methodologically challenging. We present the issues involved in measuring remoteness and the indexation of funding to measure remoteness in the Canadian context, with particular attention to remote First Nations. We also consider the data requirements in the context of First Nations, including issues of community versus agency-level data and of appropriate data ownership and control.

Keywords:

• Remoteness,
• Index of Remoteness,
• Indigenous communities,
• community services,
• service delivery