According to OECD definitions of rural regions, around one in five Canadians live in Canada’s rural regions, which accounts for 97.1% of total Canadian landmass and over a third (36.4%) of the OECD’s overall rural regional landmass. Like most countries, rural regions have lower aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) than urban areas but unlike many countries, those gaps are closing in Canada. The rural-urban income gap in 2020 was half the size it was in 2000 and, between 2010 and 2020, average annual labour productivity growth in rural areas (2.4%) outpaced urban areas (1.9%). Inequalities in high-technology innovation between rural and metropolitan regions are also relatively low compared to OECD countries. From 2016 to 2020, the difference in average patenting intensity, measured as the number of patents per capita, between rural remote regions and metropolitan regions was 0.08 in Canada, compared to an OECD average of 0.15.