Creeping urbanization throughout Canada could lead to the creation of city-states that ignore rural issues within a decade if current trends keep up, according to one Saskatchewan academic.

Urbanization and rural depopulation is happening in countries like Vietnam, Nigeria or Pakistan, said University of Saskatchewan professor Ken Coates to CBC Radio's Saskatchewan Weekend.

"Rural Canada is in trouble. Many small towns are seeing the population, industries moving out," Coates, Canada Research Chair in Regional Innovation, said.

That's the question University of Saskatchewan professor Ken Coates is asking at a lecture about rural and small town people. He explains to host Shauna Powers what it would take to help these communities thrive. 14:20

"We're getting mobile work forces, so people are flying in and flying out, rather than living in the northern communities, for example."

Coates said city-states diminish rural populations, the diversity of the human condition and the places to live where people can live the lifestyle they choose, because not everyone wants to live in a big city.

He will be speaking at the Saskatoon Club on Monday evening with the presentation Do the 'People Who Don't Matter' have a Future: Prospects and Possibilities for Rural and Small-Town Peoples.

Nearly half of Saskatchewan's population alone can be found in either Saskatoon or Regina, the city's two largest population centres.

As small towns dwindle in population and industry, there is also a societal loss, such as history and culture from those small towns, the professor added.

Coates said Canadians, including those in Saskatchewan, do not seem to be pushing against that trend like they have in other places such as Scandinavia.

Innovation is needed to prevent city-states and one of the first avenues for that could be the government reviewing its policies, he said.

Coates used the example of Norway where a certain quality of service is expected and guaranteed, such as the electricity grid or a reliable internet connection, regardless of where someone lives in the country.

"You don't get the disparity of circumstance that we have and take for granted in Canada," he said.

"I've been in small towns where people say 'oh yeah, we aren't able to keep nurses and doctors.'

"They sort of just accept it as as a natural way of things. Well it's not natural and it's not inevitable."