Bill fast-tracking resort development sets 'problematic' precedent, critics say

Nakiska Ski Area in Alberta's Kananaskis Provincial Park. (file)

A bill giving Alberta’s government power to reclassify land in provincial parks for the development of all-season resorts has some concerned about environmental impacts and the "problematic" precedent it sets by allowing the province to bypass existing legislation.

Bill 35, the All-Season Resort Act, will allow the province to reclassify public land as an all-season resort area, management of which falls under the administration of Alberta’s Minister of Tourism and Sport Joseph Schow.

Provincial parks, wilderness areas, ecological reserves, and heritage rangelands can also have their protected status rescinded to make them eligible for resort development.

These changes are meant to increase investor confidence and fix "fractured approval processes," a spokesperson for Schow's office said.

To expedite the approval process, projects in designated all-season resort areas will be exempt from public consultation requirements under the Alberta Land Stewardship Act and review by Alberta’s Natural Resources Conservation Board.

"(These pieces of legislation) have been created over time with a lot of public consultation to set the direction of how we manage our lands in the province. And this bill just supersedes all of those existing policies," said Katie Morrison, executive director for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) Southern Alberta chapter.

"It is very problematic from a precedent setting perspective that you can just create a new bill that skirts around existing policy and legislation, and also explicitly ignores the public consultation aspect."

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Morrison said the bill places resort development above environmental standards and planning processes, while transferring authority over projects in natural areas to the Ministry of Tourism and Sport, "which has never managed land and doesn't have the scope or the expertise to look at that big picture of environment and other land uses and conflicts.

"It's creating this fast-tracked system that ignores the context and the important environmental values of this land."

Schow's office said in an email that more staff will be hired as needed to handle land management responsibilities that are new to the ministry.

"If the bill is passed, recruitment will begin to hire a team of land management and environmental experts to staff the new regulator within the Ministry of Tourism and Sport.

"This new regulator will be able to give focused priority to proposed all-season resort developments in the province and will continue to collaborate with their colleagues in the ministries of Forestry and Parks and Environment and Protected Areas."

Several amendments to Bill 35 were proposed in the legislature this week, including one by NDP MLA Nicole Goehring to remove a section excluding decisions on all-season resorts from judicial review.

The section states that all decisions made by the minister regarding all-season resort areas and development are "final and shall not be questioned or reviewed in any court by application for judicial review or otherwise."

"I think it’s only fair to have those being impacted by having a resort put in their community, have the capacity to say no," Goehring said in the legislature on Dec. 3.

All proposed amendments were defeated, and the bill passed its third reading on Wednesday.

Schow's office said the exemption of the minister’s decisions from review "mirrors that of the regulation of energy projects by the Alberta Energy Regulator. Under the All-Season Resorts Act, appeals can be made to the Alberta Court of Appeal and the Public Lands Appeal Board, or the Environmental Appeal Board."