An MPP from rural and small-town Ontario has done what no one else could do and forced the province’s government and the City of Toronto to think about the many problems hidden behind their barn doors and welcoming front porches.

Bill Murdoch, a Progressive Conservative maverick and often a joker, did it by suggesting Toronto should become a separate province, which will never happen.

But suddenly he has the ear of government and the news media in a city where most people know almost nothing about farms and small communities.

Premier Dalton McGuinty rarely talks about them, because he likes to boast of giant, high-tech successes and there are not many of these in rural areas and small towns. He got elected partly by promising to provide “strong, prosperous rural communities that work,” but has not dwelled much on this recently, and most Toronto news media might go a month before acknowledging there are such things as farms.

Many Torontonians probably do not know that most farms are struggling, particularly because of skyrocketing production costs and low-priced, subsidized competition from abroad, although farmers these days demonstrate more regularly outside the legislature any other aggrieved group.

They feel sometimes that government is against them because, pushed by well-intentioned, city-based environmentalists, it imposes regulations that burden them, including saying where and how they can use fertilizer and where they can build.

The McGuinty Liberals have set aside a massive area around Toronto as greenbelt to preserve open space for future generations, which draws admiration from around the world, but at a cost to farmers who counted on selling for their retirements.

Health services are not as accessible in rural areas and small towns for several reasons, including that doctors feel they lack amenities they want for their families.

The province is closing emergency rooms in some small hospitals to save money, and residents complain that bureaucrats pushing this are not allowing them meaningful public hearings.

One study has shown that women in rural areas have more serious illnesses, including cancer, have a higher accident rate and die earlier, and another that rural men and women are more prone to obesity, high blood pressure and damage caused by excessive smoking and drinking. Yet another found that rural residents have a higher suicide rate than the provincial average, because they have lower incomes, become more stressed, abuse alcohol and drugs more and have suicidal thoughts.

Schools in some small communities are being closed, because they are considered too small and residents fear their communities also will disappear, because people with children no longer will choose to live there.

Rural areas and towns are not attracting immigrants, particularly of the type who are well educated and strengthen communities and instead flock mainly to Toronto, where there are many from similar backgrounds and more suitable jobs.

Smaller cities and towns have been revealed as often not the idyllic havens of peace, safety and tranquility many in the bigger cities assume them to be.

Examples include the abduction and murder of a child in Woodstock and intense scrutiny that exposed widespread drug abuse and lack of education that could make lives more stable.

Violent crime, including use of guns, assault, robbery and murder, has grown steadily in small-town Ontario, while it largely has stabilized in major cities. This has been blamed on lack of jobs and loss of community spirit and police cracking down on crime in Toronto and pushing it into other areas.

Downtowns in some small cities with their closed, ghost stores turn into mass drunken scenes on weekend nights. In Guelph, 4,000 drinkers regularly pour out of 33 bars and cause fights and vandalism, and the province seemingly has no ideas on how to cool it.

Opposition MPPs have complained the government puts more effort into helping the bigger cities, where its most powerful ministers, including McGuinty, come from, and this would not be surprising. Politicians tend to take more care of those who elected them.