Environmental groups want the province's new Parks Act scrapped because it won't protect natural areas like Big Lake.
The province introduced its proposed legislation Nov. 4. It's the first major update to Alberta's parks laws since 1983.
Alberta's parks are currently divided into seven categories, with each category permitting different uses. If passed, the act would reduce this to two — heritage rangelands (grazing-managed grasslands) and provincial parks (everything else). Each park would also be zoned to show what activities were allowed in which areas.
The act follows months of consultation that went into the province's new Plan for Parks, said Cindy Ady, the provincial parks minister.
"One thing Albertans told me is that they found all the classifications systems very confusing," she said.
The explicit zones proposed by this act would clarify what people could do where in a park. "I want somebody when they enter that area to know, 'I'm in a highly sensitive area. I better not be here with anything but a camera.'"
The act would also create a Parks Conservation Foundation and advisory council able to promote park development and collect donations.
Law too vague, say critics
Zoning would be an improvement over the current system, said Miles Constable, president of the Big Lake Environment Support Society (BLESS), which is sometimes confusing. "A lot of people don't know you cannot ride ATVs on a frozen lake in a provincial park," he said as an example.
But the act doesn't say how those zones would work, said Sarah Elmeligi, conservation planner with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society's southern Alberta chapter. It says each park will be made of "one or more of four park zones," but doesn't say what those zones are or the activities allowed in them.
Zoning will be determined at a later date through regulation and public consultation, Ady said. They kept the definitions of the four zones out of the law to reduce confusion. "I think most of those [conservation] groups will be very comfortable when they see their favourite park in an appropriate zone."
Conservation groups don't totally trust her on this one, Constable said. While the old laws had set definitions for what could be done in a park, the new one allows parks to be rezoned as the minister sees fit. "Would the minister have the ability to relax, say, the use of ATVs in Lois Hole Park in the wintertime?" he asked. "So far as we can tell, there's nothing that would stop the minister from making those sort of rules."
The proposed act creates a mandatory 60-day notice for any zoning change, Ady said, which would link into the department's current consultation process. (The province can change the permitted uses of a park without notice under current laws.) "We don't do anything in parks without asking anymore."
A place like Lois Hole would probably have one zone, she said, and be zoned for ecological protection. "I'm not looking to open parks to motorized vehicles," Ady said. "I'm not looking for and will not be letting any oil and gas plays in parks."
She said she was confident some of the "angst" over zoning would go away once her department presents its proposed zones for the parks.
The parks minister might want to protect parks today, Constable said, but what about tomorrow? As populations grow around parks like Lois Hole, ministers will feel more pressured to open them up to recreational users. "That we find somewhat unsettling."
This act will dilute the protection of our protected areas, Elmeligi said, and needs to be scrapped. "The protection of ecological integrity should be the foundation of our parks and protected areas system."
MLAs will debate the bill later this fall.
