Relax — no Alberta parks are going to be sold
Ministry’s news release may have unwittingly created some confusion
There’s a petition out there asking signatories to call on the UCP government to “stop the fire-sale of Alberta’s provincial parks.”
Where can I sign up, right? Uh, wrong.
By midday Wednesday, more than 32,500 Albertans had signed that petition. Twitter was aflame with good folk worrying that Alberta’s beloved wilderness areas were going to be turned into parking lots.
Even though the above document was being pushed by Leadnow — that U.s.-funded purveyor of fake news and election-interfering activism designed to attack Canadian governments that want Canada’s oil and gas industry to thrive — some knowledgeable, savvy people I know actually signed it.
The Leadnow petition goes on to say: “Imagine having to pay $300 to enter “Scotiabank’s Kananaskis Experience … part of a slow sneaky process that governments from the likes of Jason Kenney to Donald Trump are trying to push through: manufacture a budget crisis to justify selling off public land, water down regulations and let companies make a quick buck off huge entry fees.”
Someone should hire this copywriter to bang out a fantasy novel.
Here’s the real news, which also happens to be good news: Alberta’s provincial parks are not for sale — not one square centimetre.
“We are not selling any Crown or public land — period,” Alberta
Environment and Parks Minister Jason Nixon said Wednesday afternoon.
So, how on Earth did this lie take hold like wildfire before the truth could start to extinguish it?
As that old saying goes: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
In this case, the shoes are size 16 and belong to the six-footeight Nixon, an avid outdoorsman who admits his ministry’s news release on changes to the province’s parks model may have unwittingly created some of the confusion.
Nixon says after an assessment was done of all 473 Alberta Parks, 164 sites with a land base of 0.3 per cent of all Alberta parks lands were being considered to be returned to just plain, old, government-owned Crown land, but removed from “the parks system.”
For instance, Nixon says Sulphur Lake Provincial Recreation Area in the Central Peace region was visited by just 36 people last year. In 2018, Smokey River South Public Rec Area in the West Yellowhead part of the province saw only 22 people visit. In Crow Lake Provincial Park in the Fort Mcmurray area, only 81 people used the facilities last year.
“Some of these places are a six-hour round trip for Parks employees to get to in very remote areas, so they’re using helicopters to get firewood up to 36 people trying to camp in these areas, which is costing a lot of money. I don’t think Albertans want us spending their money this way,” said Nixon.
Albertans can still visit these areas, but they’ll have to bring in their own firewood and no other services will be provided.
“Our goal is to try to get the money used to service these underutilized areas and redirect them to our crown jewels, to improve the experience for Albertans and enhance tourism,” said Nixon.
What about the following statement from his ministry’s own website, where it states: “Sites removed from the parks system allow a greater range of uses that were previously not possible under government regulation. Successful sale or transfer to a third party will enable these sites to continue to be part of the community while generating new economic opportunities.”
“This is not about selling Crown land,” said Nixon. “Those lands will no longer be governed under the Parks Act, they will simply revert back to Crown land. Where it says ‘sale’, it’s referring to the assets that may be in those areas.”
For instance, years ago Nixon ran a Christian ministry for the Mustard Seed at Mountain Aire Lodge outside of Sundre. The land was owned by the province but the group had a lease to run the lodge, gas station, campground and restaurant in a program designed to help addicts kick their destructive lifestyles.
If a private individual or group wants to run a campground, for instance, they can purchase the lease — but not the land. Nixon also points to the Bow Valley Ranche Restaurant in Fish Creek Provincial Park in Calgary. While the people who run the highly regarded restaurant don’t own the land in the park, they can lease out the building to someone else to run the restaurant, if they so choose.
Nixon’s favourite example of the kind of partnership he hopes will occur in some of Alberta’s less-used parks can be found with the Friends of the Eastern Slopes Association. The notfor-profit, volunteer group runs the Bighorn Campground on the Parks Canada Ya Ha Tinda Ranch. They’ve been doing that since 1994 and charge only a $30 membership fee to those who camp in the maintained areas.
So, you can safely ignore the petition, put on your hiking boots and continue to happily enjoy Alberta’s great outdoors.