Three former Parks Canada bosses made national headlines last week, when they released a letter to the minister of environment, asking that she put a stop to Maligne Tours鈥� proposal to build a hotel on one of Jasper鈥檚 iconic lakes.
The letter鈥攁ddressed to Leona Aglukkaq and signed by Nikita Lopoukhine, a former director general, Stephen Woodley, a former chief ecosystem scientist, and Kevin Van Tighem, a former superintendent of Banff National Park鈥攁sserts the trio鈥檚 belief that approval of a 66-room hotel on Maligne Lake would fly in the face of Parks鈥� policy to limit development within the park.
It also suggests that approval 鈥渃ould open the floodgates to more commercial development, putting the ecological integrity of the mountain parks and quality of park visitor experiences at risk.鈥�
鈥淚t is in our view,鈥� they wrote, 鈥渢hat the Canadian people, Jasper and other national park ecosystems and Parks Canada have nothing to gain and plenty to lose if this development is approved.鈥�
Although the letter doesn鈥檛 say anything that hasn鈥檛 been said since Maligne Tours released its plans last year, receiving such strong opposition from the pen of former senior parks staff makes the message all the more powerful.
Parks is often considered a brotherhood, and it鈥檚 not often that staff, former or present, speaks out against its brothers. But slowly, as Parks鈥� mandate has shifted closer to visitor experience and further away from ecological integrity, that unwritten rule has disappeared.
In Jasper, the shift became noticeable in 2011 when Brewster Travel Canada first presented its controversial proposal for the Glacier Skywalk鈥攖hen called the Glacier Discovery Walk.
For many, that project was a breaking point that resulted in loud rumbling from former Parks employees who were鈥攁nd still are鈥攂affled by the direction in which the agency is moving.
The addition of those voices in the fight to protect our park, and all of Canada鈥檚 parks, gives it a new level of legitimacy, because former Parks employees are not only intimately familiar with the policies that guide our parks, they have an invested interest in seeing these spaces鈥攖he last pieces of true wilderness in the country鈥攌ept for generations to come.
Parks is expected to release its decision on Maligne Tours鈥� proposal any day now.
We hope that the voices of former Parks staff and the many Canadians who have taken the time to write to Parks over the past six months will be taken into consideration in that decision, and that the agency will choose nature over development.
