Recommendations to the NCC Mandate Review Panel

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Funding

A clear mandate of conservation and stewardship, and the governance structure to support this, along with a cultural shift to support a more focused mandate and more openness and transparency should be prerequisites to new funding for the NCC. More resources are likely needed to ensure that the NCR's and Gatineau Park's values are monitored, managed and protected. But the NCC's reluctance to accept offers of free assistance to support its programs indicates that there are other more significant barriers to success beyond a simple shortage of funds.

In 2000, the blue ribbon "Panel on the Ecological Integrity of Canada's National Parks" also identified barriers that needed to be overcome prior to additional funding being allocated to the Parks Canada Agency. These recommendations related in large part to the Parks Canada organizational culture and science capacity:

"The strengthening of natural and social science capacity, and the interpretation and partnership programs recommended by the Panel will require substantial additional financial resources. This new money is a necessary condition for giving a more rigorous focus to ecological integrity, but money alone will not suffice. Several "first steps" are needed to improve the broader management framework for ecological integrity in Parks Canada that should be implemented before the allocation of any new funds."¹

These "first steps" to implement improved management and accountability for ecological integrity (EI) in national parks were chosen to set a new direction at both symbolic and operational levels and included, among other recommendations:

• enhancing science advisory capacity to the CEO and Executive Board;

• development of an Agency Charter that lays out the core values of the organization relating to EI;

• a staff training and orientation program focused on EI;

• revisions to planning guidelines to make EI the overarching theme of park management plans;

• Enhancing public transparency on spending of resources on ecosystem research, monitoring and management etc;

• Written guidelines to re-focus marketing efforts from mass tourism to social marketing and messages on EI;

• A strategic plan to move beyond first steps to address long term re-orientation of the Agency towards EI;

• Specific accountability goals for the EI mandate, including regional integration;

Several years after the Panel's recommendations were submitted, the Agency had made substantive progress, such that the Chair of the Panel supported their efforts to secure additional funds, as did the broad environmental community in Canada. In 2003, the Agency received a substantial investment of public funds to start to implement its clarified EI mandate.

The approach of the "EI Panel" in identifying key barriers that needed to be addressed prior to additional funding being allocated could provide an interesting model for the NCC Mandate Review Panel to consider, and we suggest that panel members review this report when considering their recommendations.

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1. Parks Canada Agency (2000). Unimpaired for Future Generations? Protecting Ecological Integrity with Canada's National Parks. Vol II. Report of the Panel on the Ecological Integrity of Canada's National Parks. Ottawa, ON. Page 1-10.