IT’S TIME TO TERMINATE PARK BOARD

If ever there was a case for ending the 129year existence of the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, this week’s bylaw amendment to ban cetaceans from Stanley Park is it.

The 6-1 vote in favour of the ban dismissed concerns raised by the Vancouver Aquarium that its Marine Mammal Rescue Centre would no longer be able to provide long-term care for cetaceans unable to look after themselves.

Over the last three years, the rescue program has rehabilitated more than 400 marine mammals that were successfully released. Only those few that cannot survive in the wild are housed at the aquarium — and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, not the Vancouver Aquarium, makes the decision on whether to release an animal.

If the park board’s prohibition is enacted, sick, injured or orphaned whales, dolphins and porpoises will likely be euthanized on the beach rather than nursed back to health.

But aquarium critics argue death is preferable to a life in what they call captivity. For many of them, the ban on cetaceans is only part of a broader antagonism toward the aquarium. They have attacked aquarium founders as lumber barons motivated only by money, compare the aquarium with a Barnum and Bailey circus, and equate the lives of cetaceans at the aquarium with 19th-century slavery of blacks. The park board has joined forces with these zealots.

The park board decision could be costly for taxpayers because the Vancouver Aquarium could — and should — challenge it in court. The cetacean ban spells the end of a planned $100-million expansion and will slash the aquarium’s operating revenue. The aquarium’s draw as a tourist attraction will be much diminished, and jobs as well as volunteer opportunities will disappear.

The aquarium can prove actual loss and damage; the park board has only hyperbole as a defence.

The park board came into being in 1888 to manage the city’s new acquisition of Stanley Park and became an elected body two years later. It remains one of only a few elected park boards in Canada. While a separate body to manage the park and other recreation facilities made sense at the turn of the century when the city was in its infancy, it serves no useful purpose today. In fact, it allows Vancouver city council to avoid taking responsibility for the management of assets and delivery of services that should be within its jurisdiction. And, unlike some of our high-profile city councillors, few know who the park board members are.

That said, the Vancouver Aquarium is too important an institution to leave in the hands of municipal politicians. Its status as a worldclass marine research and educational institution, one of B.C.’s biggest tourist attractions and an important partner with the DFO and similar international bodies dealing with protecting ocean environments, species survival and adapting to climate change, suggests a higher level of governance is called for. After all, the Vancouver Aquarium belongs to all British Columbians, even all Canadians, not just a small subset of vocal locals.

The lease in perpetuity to the park board for Stanley Park should be amended and assumed by either the federal or provincial government. The park board’s remaining activities could be handled by Vancouver’s bureaucracy, as is the case in most every other Canadian city.

It seems clear that politics and ideology trumped science, compassion and common sense in the park board’s anti-aquarium vote. Unless the park board reconsiders its decision and repeals the bylaw just passed, it will be up to the courts to reverse it.

When results of the vote were announced this week, supporters of the ban declared that cetaceans had won. What cetaceans won is the right to suffer and die.