You're right that there was a movement of funds from rural to urban Canada. It was based on the fact that the variables, which were the same as before...the new statistics to those variables were taken into account for the 2001 census data.
As the chart in the back of the deck outlines, there has been a considerable shift or demographic change in the youth population in Canada. Newfoundland, for example, lost 17% of its youth population between 1996 and 2001. So the reality is that those new numbers reflect the changing demographics in each constituency.