Repeal the All-Season Resorts Act: Prevent our Parks from Being Delisted and Privatized
Alberta’s parks, public lands and protected areas belong to all Albertans — and access to them must remain affordable and equitable. The newly passed ‘All-Season Resorts Act’ threatens to undermine them doing so.
On November 7, 2024, Bill 35 — the All-Season Resorts Act — was introduced by the Tourism and Sport Ministry. On December 6, 2024, the All-Season Resort Act passed, exposing public land, beloved by Albertans and critical to biodiversity conservation and ecological integrity, to the development of year-round privatized resorts.
We need to protect deteriorating ecosystems, restore habitat for species at risk — like bison, woodland caribou, native trout and grizzly bear — and ensure our environment is managed responsibly, providing local, sustainable tourism that supports both Albertan communities and our provincial economy.
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Instead, the All-Season Resorts Act (ASRA):
- Exempts tourism development in All-Season Resort areas from normal environmental review and permitting processes applied to other public land use activities.
- Makes it clear that parks and protected area designations may be rescinded to create All-Season Resort Zones.
- Contradicts long standing government policy and legislation, including the Kananaskis Country Recreation Policy, which was the result of robust public consultation that concluded Albertans’ desire for the future of Kananaskis to be about conservation, not large-scale commercial development.
- Flies in the face of recent public polling and survey responses for the development of a new Alberta Plan for Parks, which highlighted support for increased protected areas for conservation and low-impact recreation, not removing park status and increasing the risk of unsustainable development.
- Undermines the Alberta Land Stewardship Act (ALSA) and the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act and the Natural Resources Conservation Board Act.
- Does not allow members of the public, stakeholders, or Indigenous Peoples to have a say in how and where All-Season Resorts are developed.
- Transfers land management to the Tourism and Sport Ministry, which has never been a land manager, and to staff in this Ministry who have no experience or expertise to carry out this role.
All-Season Resorts MUST be subject to the same rigorous standards of planning and review as all other developments on public land, conducted by the appropriate experts in land use planning and environmental regulation.
Write to the Ministry of Tourism and Sport to REPEAL the All-Seasons Resort Act (ASRA), to support sustainable outdoor tourism and recreation opportunities, and to keep our parks, protected areas from being DELISTED, and public lands privatized.
