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Executive Summary

Over the past decade, Banff has become the centre of the debate over the future of Canada's national parks policy. Environmentalists have consistently clashed with community planners and commercial interests asserting that the multiple-use philosophy that inspired the establishment of Canada's first national park is now imperiling it. As restrictions on access to, and activities within, Banff National Park continue to add up, this Public Policy Source seeks to investigate the growing influence of radical environmentalism on Parks Canada policy. We will document how:

• Policy debate continues to focus on the commercial and recreational activities such as downhill skiing, golf, and tourist activities in the Banff townsite despite the fact that less than four percent of the park has ever been open to them. This crisis rhetoric does not reflect the positive increase in Canada's protected areas network over the past decade (38 million hectares); rather, it reflects the "moving targets" of environmentalist campaigns.
• The environmentalist agenda has expanded its attention from saving species to saving spaces through "rewilding schemes" such as the Wildlands Project, Y2Y (Yellowstone to Yukon), and A2A (Algonquin to Adirondacks). As Banff is considered part of the "critical link" of the Y2Y initiative, environmentalists have devoted significant resources to phasing development out of Banff. The social and economic consequences of such radical schemes are severe, but policy-makers are responding favourably to such projects. The Ecological Integrity Panel cited Y2Y as part of "the new paradigm of protected areas."
• The "ecosystem approach" adopted by Parks Canada is an extremely problematic management philosophy because of the fact that ecosystems are not, in fact, concrete systems, but mental constructs ("geographic free-for-alls"). For instance, the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem has been estimated to cover anywhere from 5 to 19 million acres, depending on who's defining it.
• The "top-down theory" that asserts that large carnivores serve a special role in regulating ecosystems lacks widespread support within the scientific community. Nonetheless, environmentalists have made the grizzly bear the rallying symbol in their public advocacy campaigns. Their cause is advanced by the research and policy-making efforts of "independent" projects such as the Eastern Slopes Grizzly Bear Project (ESGBP), whose Parks Canada representative "ultimately became the main author of the park management plan." Such "mission-oriented" science projects are guided by the unique blend of science, ideology, and activism characteristic of contemporary environmentalism.
• By providing grants and establishing community funding (or "animation") programs to support the lobbying and research efforts of environmental groups, government is tilting the playing field in the debate over park policy towards the agendas of special interests.
• The Banff-Bow Valley Study (BBVS) released in 1996 painted a dark future for the park by warning that "Commercial interests will ease out spiritual values, to the detriment and creativity of the nation." However, the reliability of the predictive models is questionable, and the paucity of social science evidence casts doubt on the study's conclusions. For example, despite relying on estimated rates of visitation ranging from 3 to 6 percent, the actual rates of visitation since 1988-89 have resulted in close to a cumulative 1 percent drop (this drop amounts to over 13 percent if one discounts the anomalous surge in attendance in 1994-95).
• The Panel on Outlying Commercial Accommodation (OCA) was established in 1998 to review guidelines for OCAs and ski areas in the mountain parks. Again adopting the round table process, the constructive efforts of Parks Canada to draft new ski area guidelines in conjunction with ski area operators were rejected by environmentalists in their entirety. Instead, the Panel heard suggestions that "When a ski area's lease runs out, shut the things down, yank the equipment, raze the buildings and reclaim the access road."
• The Ecological Integrity (EI) Panel review (which released its final report last March) was billed as a participatory process, although a review of the organization affiliations of the individuals invited to participate in the Panel's workshops (as well as the composition of the Panel and secretariat themselves) reveal that environmentalists, park professionals, and scientists clearly outnumber other interested stake holders. The relative influence of environmentalists is reflected in the final report of the Panel, which concluded that Parks Canada had "no dual mandate" to oversee both protection and use.
• Parks Canada has commissioned policy review studies that have debated such questionable projects as the extermination of all non-native species of wildlife and vegetation; raising or burying the Trans-Canada Highway; returning golf courses to "pristine montane conditions"; and having downhill skiing declared an "inappropriate activity," or at the very least, having it classified as a "non-conforming use." Several of these projects are already under way.
• Environmental groups are now poised to gain added clout as a result of the expanded human resource potential of the new Parks Canada Agency, whose very creation reflects the use of organizational redesign as a policy instrument. Lamenting a "green ceiling" within the organization, the EI Panel recommended transforming the parks agency into an advocacy organization.

A centralized approach to policy-making, including environmental policy, provides an inviting target for small, highly focused and aggrieved groups. In order to be able to afford sustaining a national park system guided by sound science (estimated by the EI Panel to require $28 million per year in additional funding) and management, new revenue generation mechanisms are going to be needed. User fees, environmental entrepreneurship, and private stewardship all allow market mechanisms naturally to protect the scarcity of Canada's parks and wilderness.

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Last Modified: August 23, 2000.