Recommendations to the NCC Mandate Review Panel

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Gatineau Park

Having provided general comments on the mandate review of the NCC, we would like to focus on some specific recommendations regarding how the broad mandate and governance issues manifest themselves in the management of Gatineau Park, which is the NCC responsibility that most directly impacts on Chelsea.

Context:

Gatineau Park is a nationally significant landscape on the doorstep of the nation's capital. It has a very high level of biodiversity, and has more species at risk living within its boundaries than any other park in Quebec.

The park is also one of the most heavily visited parks in Canada with 1.7 million visits per year, greatly exceeding the intensity of visitation of Banff National Park in terms of visits per square kilometre.

The challenge facing the federal government is how to maintain the ecosystem health of Gatineau Park for future generations of Canadians, while encouraging Canadians from the region and across Canada to enjoy its natural and cultural values.

With the population of the NCR growing, threats to the park's ecosystem health are increasing. These include pressures from growing numbers of visitors, as well as the increasing ecological isolation of the park as an "island" in an urban, near-urban and agricultural landscape.

The 2005 Master Plan identifies significant threats to the park and makes recommendations to address them. ACRE supports the new Master Plan's clear identification of conservation as the priority mandate of the park. The Master Plan provides a solid roadmap for the next decade of park management. However, ACRE does not believe that the Plan can be effectively implemented without significant adjustments to the governance framework of the NCC and park.

The NCC does not have the ecological science and protected areas professional capacity to implement the plan, nor is there a legal framework to support the Master Plan implementation or the enforcement of necessary rules. The science capacity issue was addressed earlier in this submission for the NCC generally, and will also have to be enhanced at the park level as well. The need for legal protection of the park itself is addressed below.

Legal Protection:

ACRE strongly recommends that a legal framework be developed for Gatineau Park that:

1. Identifies the maintenance and restoration of ecological integrity as the first priority in managing the park;

2. Establishes the boundaries of the park in law, and does not allow lands to be removed from the park without an Act of Parliament (while allowing lands to be added without an act of Parliament);

3. Ensures accountability for implementing park management plans;

4. Highlights the need to work collaboratively within the broader region to ensure the health of the "Greater Park Ecosystem".

A federal legal tool already exists that incorporates all of these principles - the Canada National Parks Act. The option of transferring Gatineau Park to the authority of the Parks Canada Agency should be thoroughly explored, including an analysis of the protected areas management capacity and support systems that this option would offer, along with the opportunity to showcase Canada's national parks system on the doorstep of the nation's capital.

ACRE recommends that Gatineau Park be legally protected using either the Canada National Parks Act or an equivalent level of legal protection that focuses as a first priority on protecting the park's ecological integrity, and that the federal government ensure that the ecosystem science capacity is in place to implement this legal mandate.

Current private member bills before the Senate and House of Commons were tabled with the best of intentions but we believe that they focus too strongly on removing private landowners from the park without adequate consideration of the primary goal of maintaining and restoring the park's ecological integrity. While there are challenges inherent in having private residences and associated infrastructure inside the park, the greater challenge to the park's ecosystem health comes from its growing fragmentation, visitor use, and increasing ecological isolation. Focusing on ridding the park of private residences risks creating a contentious political environment that could jeopardize any legal protection framework from being put in place. While we recognize the value in acquiring private lands within the park over time, we suggest that this can be done on a willing seller - willing buyer basis, and that a fund be set up to support these purchases as they become available. We suggest that park residents and local municipalities should be engaged in ensuring that municipal policies and programs are compatible with the park's mandate.

In our submission to the Municipality of Chelsea's "Plan d'urbanisme" in 2004, ACRE recommended that the Municipality plan on a whole ecosystem basis by cooperating with Gatineau Park and adjacent municipalities for nature conservation and biodiversity conservation. As a first step towards implementing this approach, ACRE has taken on the task of a preliminary mapping of the conservation values of the lands within Chelsea, outside the park. We are interested in working with the NCC and the Municipality of Chelsea to protect neighbouring lands of high conservation value as a means of supporting the health of the Gatineau Park greater ecosystem.