Action Alerts

Time To Act on New Northern Parks

The time for celebration of five new large and important parks in Canada’s north is near. We just need a bit more of your help to put them over the edge.

Below is a column by Don Martin which ran in the Calgary Herald and National Post on Saturday, February 24th. Take note that it is not just CPAWS, but a government spokesperson that is saying that action on these areas is coming soon. Once complete, these five areas will be a contribution to nature preservation of global significance, something that Canada can be proud of on the international scene for generations.

We must make sure that the current momentum continues, however, until the parks are announced, and then completed. Much of the decision-making power in that regard currently resides here in Calgary. In addition to Prime Minister Harper and Northern Development Minister Jim Prentice both being Calgarians and representing Calgary constituencies, it is the oil industry, based in Calgary, which is the driver of development in the Mackenzie Valley. All this means that the voice of Calgarians, and those in the surrounding area, have a special role to play in bringing these parks to fruition.

So please take the time today to write to the Prime Minister, Ministers Prentice and Baird, and your own Member of Parliament and voice your support for the designation of these new northern protected areas. Contact info is:

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
E-mail: Harper.S@parl.gc.ca

Ottawa Office
Telephone: (613) 992-4211
Fax: (613) 941-6900

Calgary Constituency Office - Calgary Southwest
1600 - 90th Avenue SW, Suite A-203
Calgary, Alberta T2V 5A8
Telephone: (403) 253-7990
Fax: (403) 253-8203

The Honourable Jim Prentice
Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
E-mail: Prentice.J@parl.gc.ca

Ottawa Office
Telephone: (613) 992-4275
Fax:(613) 947-9475

Constituency Office - Calgary Centre North
105-1318 Centre St NE
Calgary, Alberta T2E 2R7
Telephone: (403) 216-7777
Fax: (403) 230-4368

The Honourable John Baird
Minister of Environment
E-mail: Baird.J@parl.gc.ca

Ottawa Office
Telephone: (613) 996-0984
Fax: (613) 996-9880

Snail mail may be sent to all Members of Parliament, including the above, free of charge (i.e. no stamp required) at:

House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1A 0A6

Thanks for taking the time to write today.

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New parks preserve wild North

Where Liberals stalled, Tories turn deeper shade of green

At right: Virginia Falls in Nahanni National Park has twice the vertical drop of Niagara Falls. The existing park will be expanded by 28,500 square kilometres. (Photo courtesy of Bill Mason Productions)

Don Martin, Calgary Herald
Published: Saturday, February 24, 2007

A vast swath of northern wilderness, almost the size of the island of Newfoundland, will be elevated into national park or protected status later this year, preserving ecological jewels deemed critical to Canadian watersheds, wildlife and helping the fight against climate change.

It’s a perfect shade of pragmatic green for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s sensibilities – an environmental agenda voters can understand that’s guaranteed to unleash a chorus of praise from once-hostile activists while costing very little to implement. The bonus is making dramatic progress on files that languished under Liberal prime minister Paul Martin.

Ecstatic environment groups have been told almost 100,000 square kilometres of sensitive Northwest Territories land will be preserved in perpetuity during a series of announcements to roll out before and following the federal budget on March 19.

The cost of shifting into park creation has never been a stumbling block for any government. The budget to develop all five parcels of land is estimated at just $25 million, with another $4 million per year set aside for operating funds – peanuts for a government awash in billions of surplus dollars.

Yet, lapsed interim protections and stalled negotiations have kept critical tracts of the Mackenzie region from being declared permanently off limits to mining or oil industry development.

Harvey Locke, a senior adviser to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, was downright giddy after a recent meeting with federal ministers.

“It would be a step toward what the Americans did in Alaska under (U.S. president) Jimmy Carter, which was the biggest single wilderness set-aside in the world,” says Locke, a former Liberal candidate in Calgary.

“To move on these five sites would be one of the greatest conservation things that’s been done in Canadian history. This is a globally significant wilderness area.”

Government officials confirm five areas are up for park expansion and enhanced preservation, but refuse to discuss the timing of the announcements and caution some plans will require further consultation with aboriginal groups. Environment Minister John Baird would only say the withdrawals from Canada’s developable land base in the North will happen “very soon.”

A renewed emphasis on parks and protected areas was signalled by Harper in a speech earlier this month.

“Canadians deserve large tracts of unspoiled wilderness, sanctuaries that not only preserve our precious flora and fauna, but also provide opportunities for increasingly urbanized human beings to connect with the natural world,” he said.

It’s clear that a perfect storm of fortuitous circumstances has helped groups pushing for the preservation of wetlands and boreal forests in Canada’s North.

The Harper government prefers tangible action over moves the public would consider abstract. Canadians get parks they can visit, but might struggle to grasp reduced emission “intensity” targets from oilsands smokestacks.

And, for a fraction of the $350 million given to Quebec this month for unspecified purposes in a new environmental fund, the parks plan hands Harper a tangible legacy that commands instant respect from green coalitions domestically and internationally.

“Martin didn’t get it, wasn’t interested and so it didn’t happen. Harper and Baird seem to get it,” notes Locke.

“We’ve been promoting these for five or six years, but it just so happens we are at the point in history when somebody’s finally going to do it,’ adds Ducks Unlimited spokesman Barry Turner, a former MP.

“Next to our flag, national parks are the symbol Canadians treasure the most. These projects are all at the announceable stage and can be held up anywhere in the country as proof of a government listening and acting on Canadian priorities.”

The most prized announcement will be a 28,500-square-kilometre expansion of the existing Nahanni National Park in the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories.

The valley was declared the first natural World Heritage Site on the planet in 1978. Its meandering river, traversed by fewer than 1,000 canoeists a year, rushes through gorges as deep as the Grand Canyon before spilling over Virginia Falls, which has twice the vertical drop of Niagara Falls.

It’s universally praised as one of the greatest natural spectacles on the planet and contains the Northern Hemisphere’s best karstlands, that being a sprawling collection of cave and sinkholes dissolved out of limestone.

Other key ecological areas up include the twin peninsulas of Sahoyue and Ehdacho, which jut into Great Bear Lake. The 5,900 square kilometres of rare, intact boreal forest will be granted a permanent National Historic Site designation.

The 25,000-square-kilometre Horn Plateau, a caribou reserve of wetlands and flatlands, will receive National Wildlife Area status.

The 15,000-square-kilometre Rampart River and Wetlands, which straddles the Arctic Circle 800 kilometres north of Yellowknife and has cultural significance to aboriginals in the area, will also be boosted into a National Wildlife Area.

And the East Arm, a 33,525-square-kilometre preserve of boreal forest and tundra on the eastern edge of Great Slave Lake, will be put on the fast track toward national park status, although that could still take another year or two to finalize.

But environmentalists argue the value of the preservation effort should also be calculated as helping in the war against climate change.

The boreal forests store more carbon dioxide than any other ecosystem, including rainforests, which would allow the government to claim the park creations as a pivotal contribution toward Canada’s fight against climate change.

It’s a no-lose proposition that puts the ‘conservation’ back in the ‘Conservatives’ as they rush to secure the public’s green seal of approval.

It’s a safe bet that a party derided as “climate change deniers” can’t wait to gloat at an official Opposition which declined the opportunity to act when it had the power to deliver.

© The Calgary Herald 2007

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