Parks Canada and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency will likely leave the Jasper airstrip equipped to handle emergency landings. This is good news. 

The 3,000-foot landing strip could provide an essential location in the event that an airplane runs into difficulties in the area, exactly what the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association has argued for the past decade. While we are pleased that the federal bodies seem to be paying attention to common-sense considerations of pilot safety, it’s hard to understand why this entire process was necessary.

One can’t fault Parks or the CEAA for the lengthy rigamarole of public consultation and comprehensive studies — there is a standard procedure to follow when decisions of this nature are required. Given that the airstrip will look and function in much the same way it always has, the only discernable difference will be that recreational use will be permanently banned. This is what doesn’t make sense.

When recreational users were told they could no longer fly in and out of Jasper, the explanation given was that Parks Canada no longer considered flying an appropriate activity for the National Park. While that decision in and of itself is understandable, the absolute approach taken with regard to local recreational pilots was not.

Let’s recall that the airstrip in Jasper is not considered to be in a wildlife corridor, one of the most significant reasons for the decision to close down the strip in Banff. There is no widespread public outcry for the closure of the Jasper strip. On the contrary, 98.5 per cent of submissions received by Parks supported leaving it open. 

Rather than banning use outright, couldn’t Parks have come to an arrangement with the Jasper Flying Club? Only three planes are stationed at the strip. Limiting recreational access to those craft and ensuring that the Flying Club capped their membership when a decision on use was made could have provided the conditions for a gradual phasing out of recreational flying from Jasper. This would have allowed the local pilots to continue pursuing their hobby as long as they felt like it, while preventing outside users from continuing to conduct an activity deemed inappropriate. Perhaps recreational pilots in the park lack the same heritage cachet as horse outfitters or the economic clout of a certain company that drives a massive bus onto a glacier, but they deserve better than to be instantly denied the ability to fly out of their hometown on the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen.

Take the example of the Lake O’Hara area in Yoho National Park. Concerned that the level of traffic in the area was having a negative impact on wildlife, Parks instituted a strict quota system for the bus service that runs up a fire road into the remote area. Not as many people can enjoy recreating on a daily basis, but there was no immediate shutdown of the accomodations or a complete lack of access to the area.

Every situation is different, of course, but considering the small size of the local flying club, one has to wonder if a great deal of disturbance would have been created by allowing limited recreational use to continue.

Parks isn’t likely to change their approach to this situation. The question was decided in 1997, they say. That doesn’t mean the decision made was the right one.