Now that the fall session of the Alberta Legislature is over and the United Conservative Party is celebrating its success pushing through major parts of its radical agenda, a number of new laws continue to arouse controversy. As a result, Bill 35, the All Season Resorts Act, hasn’t really received the careful attention it deserves. Professional Biologist Lorne Fitch, a regular contributor of guest posts to this blog, takes a look at some of the serious flaws with this troubling law, which he argues is nothing more than a sneaky way to privatize our province’s cherished public lands without considering the impact on the environment, recreational quality, or other tourist businesses already nearby. DJC
By Lorne Fitch
Bill 35, the All Season Resorts Act, was proposed by the United Conservative Party Government as an answer to a question Albertans never asked.
As such, the legislation allows an insiders’ game of plunking upscale hotels and facilities onto public land, including Alberta parks, irrespective of existing regional plans, protected areas, or critical wildlife habitats.
It’s as if this legislation has been modelled after J.R.R. Tolkien’s “one ring to rule them all” – Tourism and Sport Minister Jacob Schow and his successors will be able to arbitrarily exempt a resort proposal from any existing protective legislation, fast track the proposal without public consultation or input, and shield the development from review by the Natural Resources Conservation Board.
That is substantial power entrusted to a department (and a minister) with no experience or expertise in land-use planning, including assessing environmental impacts.
Added to this, the act, which was passed by the Legislature on Wednesday and given Royal Assent on Thursday, exempts development on all-season resort areas from the normal environmental planning, reviewing and permitting processes applied to activities on public lands.
What could possibly go wrong with headwaters water quality and quantity, species at risk habitats, wildfire prevention, and more human traffic with such a cavalier attitude?
In addition, there is no provision in the new law for consultation with Indigenous peoples, affected communities, or existing tourism-focused activities.
Albertans have become used to the near-sacred status of our parks and protected areas. In 2020, when this same government tried to deconsecrate many of them in an ill-advised and thinly veiled attempt at cost saving, the public reaction forced the government to walk back its plan. But it seems this government is a slow learner about how Albertans view their public lands.
This badly conceived notion of upscale “resorts” in the heart of existing recreational areas for Albertans begs a question about who are the marketing targets are for these developments. For Albertans? Hardly!
This endeavour to bring more people into some of our most scenic landscapes also fails to recognize we are surely on a path to loving these places to death. The places where business interests will want to build five-star hotels isn’t vacant land. Far from it!
Those giving us the All Season Resorts Act and the spectre of resort developments seem oblivious to the existing and future recreational (and other land use) pressures in the Eastern Slopes of the Rockies.
But then, it’s hard to see clearly when there are loonies covering your eyes!
A government funded study by the Tourism Industry Association of Alberta in 2021 had six recommendations about growing recreation, but made no mention of how to manage growth to protect ecological values or how to maintain recreational quality. We have yet to learn that more is not better, yet here we are with this new law.
The All Season Resorts Act is a sneaky way to privatize our public lands. The UCP government seems fixated on paving paradise with its single-minded push to allow the building of all-season resorts on our cherished public lands.
Lorne Fitch is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and a former Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary. He is the author of Streams of Consequence and Travels Up the Creek: A Biologist’s Search For a Paddle.
This article is so ridiculously flawed and not researched. It’s very much its own highly skewed brand of propaganda.
What specific flaws can you identify?
I mean it’s sad that the party you support are so brazenly, smirkingly corrupt, but that’s on you.
Perhaps you could fill this gap by presenting us with some sources that invalidate the author’s conclusions. You must have some right to hand if you’re so quick to dismiss this article.
Maybe you missed this part of the article, maybe you work for the UCP, maybe you just want to turn the eastern slopes to rubble so you can take the coal under there but no, I don’t think you can call into the question of the RESEARCH. What are your credentials ? Why should we be persuaded by your argument over :
“ Lorne Fitch is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and a former Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary.”
What’s your counter either than a pithy denial of reality ? Do you dispute the interpretation of the bill in question ? It’s not like you can dispute the bill itself, it’s self evident and obviously real.
When your car runs out of gas do you just pretend it doesn’t and try to keep driving ? Where does the suspension of reality begin and end, philosophically speaking?
Listen. Basically everyone is tired of this. Grow up, people are over the emperors new clothes game y’all have been playing and the clock is ticking.
This is what Albertans voted for. I hope you all enjoy it! I feel much better since I moved from Edmonton back to Canada.
I see what you did there. Nicely done.
Will Jason Nixon be able to shoot pregnant wild horses from his room?
The UCP have no shame. They are only motivated by the desire to enrich themselves at taxpayers cost. To them, public lands are being wasted by protecting watersheds and ecosystems; instead wilderness will be sacrificed so a few UCP insiders can get even wealthier. Corrupt through and through.
PS: Because they have no shame, they cannot be shamed. Because they cannot be shamed, they cannot be made to act in a principled or trustworthy manner. DJC
It will certainly make big game hunting easier. Don’t the UCP want to hunt wild animals to extinction in order to find out how many there were, before they were all annihilated and turned into trophies on rich Americans’ walls? Check:
https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/albertas-year-round-big-game-trophy-hunting-raises-concerns
https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/alberta-expands-cougar-hunting-as-critics-express-safety-and-conservation-concerns-1.7133494
https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/alberta-grizzly-bear-hunt-to-resume
Have to wonder: If private leisure types do not build these hotels that most Albertans cannot afford, maybe the “risk” will be taken up by Harper’s access to all those bucks sitting there for the pillaging [two ‘pillages’ in the same story!]
I am having trouble fighting back the tears as the UCP government continues to change the landscape – literally and figuratively of Alberta with so little regard to the people of the province or the existing legislation, giving themselves unlimited powers Is this just another way to rake in the coin or is it a defiance of a federal government that pledged to protect 30% of our natural landscape? After living most of my adult life in Alberta, I am now considering moving – to another province or another country. With the prospect of another version of the UCP in power federally, I find myself an alien in my own country.
In the long run, we’re all dead; and in a few billion years, so is the planet.
Party on.
upscale “resorts” !!
Catering to the rich and famous no less?
Visions of Lake Louise?
How many Provincial parks have been neglected?
TB
Follow the money! That is the story.
And look carefully at the political associations, friendships, donors, and spousal/family business relationships.
Lack of enabling legislation is not the reason Alberta has far fewer all season resorts than BC. Geography, weather, established highway links, and proximity to nearby urban centres are much more important factors. Canmore is Alberta’s only mountain town not located in a national park. BC has dozens of mountain towns located between numerous mountain ranges, to say nothing about its beautiful sea coast and spectacular inland lakes.
What is going on is symptomatic of ‘delusional disorder’ . The DSM V on psychiatric illnesses points out the seven points of concern. When 3 or more are part of a person’s functioning are present diagnosis may have a higher likelihood to be part of the underlying reason for diagnosis.
It hit me in the middle of the night …
Let the good people of Ranchland M.D. apply to build a tourist resort on the Grassy Mountain coal mine site.
That will nix the coal mine.
Nothing in the legislation says it has to be a four-star resort.
Just put up an outhouse.
Problem solved.
So, in Alberta, you can’t build some wind turbines 50 miles away from a mountain because anyone standing 10 metres to the east of the turbines will have his view blocked, but it’s somehow fine to build a tourist resort on the mountain itself, and ruin the view?
Well I guess it’s up to me! https://youtu.be/WHicpqU84V0 Have we forgotten who we are?