When in doubt, delay.

It’s not a bad strategy, generally speaking, and one Parks Canada was probably well advised to take when it comes to the Glacier Discovery Walk.

After receiving some 2,000 pieces of feedback from the public during the official consultation period on the project’s environmental assessment, which ended on Dec. 16, 2011, it would be hard for Supt. Greg Fenton to have reasonably gone through all that mail and email. Even with the help of Parks staff, that’s still an exceptionally large volume of text to comb through and fairly consider in just six weeks’ time, especially given the Christmas and New Year’s holidays in between.

It probably didn’t help that, in the first week of 2012, the Canadian public suddenly caught on to the fact that the project was being proposed, despite the fact that the proposal had been made public a full 12 months earlier. But, as many opponents of the Glacier Discovery Walk had argued during the consultation phase they believed was too short, Canadians as a whole simply weren’t aware of Brewster’s plans for the Icefields Parkway development.

When they finally did learn what was going on, many Canadians got their information in the form of the petition posted at Avaaz.org. Unfortunately, what they got was the wrong information, initially at least.

The petition’s original wording stated that the project “would give an American company the right to charge each of us for entry into Jasper park,” which is patently false. It was quickly amended to say “the right to charge each of us for entry into parts of Jasper park,” which is arguably true, if you consider the airspace the Discovery Walk would occupy above the Sunwapta Valley to be a part of the park.

The overall wording of the petition, however, was undeniably hyperbolic, something which Parks Canada and supporters of the Discovery Walk have attacked. But those attacks have been a bit over-the-top, themselves, accusing Avaaz of misrepresenting the facts. But the truth is, once corrected, the petition wasn’t exactly false; it just represented a point of view that is inherently anti-development and anti-Stephen-Harper.

We doubt the petition would have garnered so many signatures so quickly – 179,000-plus, at last count – if it had been worded in more moderate terms. Unfortunately, such is the nature of the public discourse these days. If you’re not shouting your message and spinning it hard, you’re probably not going to attract much attention.

Regardless of how it was achieved, opponents of the Discovery Walk will surely count Fenton’s decision to delay his verdict as a win. In fact, it’s probably the best they could have realistically hoped for.

The general belief was that the project would be approved, a belief reinforced by Parks Canada’s reaction to what it described as the “fiction” in the Avaaz petition. While it was reasonable for the agency to address the petition, its “Setting the Record Straight” press release read like it was written by a clear proponent of the project, rather than an entity that was in the process of weighing the proposal’s pros and cons.

All in all, it adds up to a messy situation and one that’s bound to be controversial no matter what Fenton ultimately decides. We can understand why he’d like a bit more time to think things over.