Yesterday’s Edmonton Journal article about UNESCO’s assessment of development in Jasper and other national parks reinforces more than the message that these protected areas are continually compromised by Parks Canada management’s and the Harper government’s desire to satiate business interests.
It goes beyond the “small p” politics of single projects pushed forward by local interests with sometimes larger connections and highlights the continued deterioration of the ecological integrity mandate of our national parks.
Over the span of a little more than a decade Parks Canada has gone from a position of embracing a greater ecosystem perspective and incorporating “science in decision-making” to a singular focus that ignores the cumulative effects of projects in combination with the effects of other developments already in-situ and transforms the tagline to “science indecision making”.
And therein lies the problem.
Indecision.
Parks Canada management can’t seem to decide what the organization stands for.
Helped along by the anti-environmental agenda and rhetoric of the Harper government, Parks Canada has lost its way and the current regime in Parks Canada management certainly does not seem to have the intestinal fortitude to stand up for the things they should be standing up for in the name of our national parks and national historic sites.
And as they say.
If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.
And so they fall, and our parks fall apart.
Well, maybe that’s a little dramatic.
Maybe we get a little too emotional about mountain goats at Tangle Ridge and grizzly bears at Norquay.
Maybe we need a more objective perspective.
A view from the outside looking in.
Something like the UNESCO assessment.
I rest my case.