Alberta Cutting back on the Park System – Bad Idea!

The Alberta Government has released it plans to reduce the amount of Parks and make systemic cuts to the Alberta Park system all in the name of saving 5 million dollars. To me this seems short sighted. To delist a third of our parks and either shut them down, reduce services, or privatize them will see these parks forever removed from use by all Albertan's and Canadians in general. Canadians value their parks very highly and any assault on them by either industry or Government is not taken lightly. The argument of the Provincial Government is that it costs “x” to run the park system and we only take in “y” in revenues. From a financial expectation I understand this argument but there are some things that you cannot put a cost on and our park system is one of those things. If revenues is a problem then I am sure that most Albertan's that use the park system would be fine with user fee increases to help cover the costs of operation. Now the Government is proposing modest increases to user fees starting this camping season of $3 but this will only scrape the surface of the operating costs. I am sure that Albertan's would be OK with a bigger increases to cover costs and not lose our parks system to closure or privatization.

Here are the 10 parks that will be initially affected.

The 10 parks affected by partial closures:

Bow Valley Provincial Park — Barrier Lake Visitor Information Centre (facility)
Gooseberry Provincial Recreation Area — Elbow Valley Visitor Centre (facility)
Dinosaur Provincial Park — Comfort Camping (facility)
Gooseberry Provincial Park Lake (campground)
Engstrom Lake Provincial Recreation Area (campground)
Chain Lakes Provincial Recreation Area (campground)
Lawrence Lake Provincial Recreation Area (campground)
Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park — Tolman Bridge Campgrounds (campground)
Notikewin Provincial Park (campground)
Smoky River South Provincial Recreation Area (campground)