Earlier this year, the province officially designated 1,350 hectares west of Bayers Lake Industrial Park as the Blue Mountain-Birch Cove Lakes Wilderness. The designation capped a two-year effort that began under former minister of the environment Mark Parent.
But last month, Halifax mayor Peter Kelly told the CBC that he won’t agree to the city buying about 400 hectares of privately owned land in the area, even though the land is designated in the HRM regional plan as wilderness park.
Kelly’s comments have enraged Parent.
“It’s disappointing,” says Parent. “It makes you wonder what these plans are worth, and no wonder people are skeptical about politicians. This 25-year regional plan, to my understanding, was discussed publicly on several occasions, it was well worked through with the [Halifax] council—and to just at the end throw it away and say, ‘well, that’s just a plan, it doesn’t mean anything,’ it is the height of political Machiavellianism. It’s just mind boggling.”
Parent is a Progressive Conservative of the old Red Tory school. He is a Baptist preacher, and is well respected in environmental circles. Widely considered to be one of the main forces behind the celebrated Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act, Parent was particularly aggressive on the wilderness designation part of the Act, which calls for 12 percent of the land area in the province to receive wilderness protection. He says that goal was foremost in his mind as he was dealing with Blue Mountain-Birch Cove Lakes.
“We moved forward there was two reasons,” he explains.
“One was the HRM plan. I understand that it had been fully discussed, vetted and adopted in their regional development plan. And that included large chunks of park land, preserve land, conservation land, which would be just to the south of the land that we [at the province] would be able to preserve. When I looked at the map and listened to the discussions, it was clear that for the area to act as an ecological whole, that both sides needed to be protected. So, we went forward with protecting the northwest side, and in fact in a press release Peter Kelly was quoted, because he was ecstatic this was supporting the plan. So, that was the main reason we moved forward.
“The second reason,” continues Parent, “was that I’d begun to talk about the 12 percent—perhaps naively, because I didn’t know we weren’t supposed to talk about protecting 12 percent. Once I had talked about it, then we put it in legislation and managed to get it through the house, it became clear that we had to move forward more aggressively because of the low amount of land that we had protected. One of the things that I always got thrown at me was, ‘well, these protected wilderness areas are off in places that people don’t go to, you’re not allowing people to enjoy them, and you’re imposing city values on places like the Tobeatic where we want to run around in our ATVs,’ right? To counter that in part, there was a splendid opportunity with the HRM plan and with the Blue Mountain area, to have a wilderness area close to a major urban centre. That was the second reason we went ahead.”
Leaving the private land in the area open for development threatens the entire wilderness area, says Parent.
“[Blue Mountain-Birch Cove Lakes] has an ecological integrity, this chain of lakes that runs through it where wildlife can run from area to area,” says Parent. “So yea, you degrade the land. You turn it into fancy park land, basically, for the benefit of those who can buy in that area. You run the risk of whether that section would actually add to the 12 percent or not. And that was always a fight I was having, because people were saying to me in my own cabinet, ‘well, you know, anything that’s quasi-protected can qualify for the designation.’ That’s not true—there’s very strict criteria that were adopted globally, when the global community said this is a goal that people should try to reach. If you look up the criteria, you run that risk with the section we designated as Blue Mountain- Birch Cove Lakes.”
Asked if Kelly’s backtracking on BMBCL speaks to the political power that the development industry has over Halifax council, Parent hesitated.
“It’d be hard for me to say definitively on that, since I don’t sit on council, but from the outside it sure appears so,” he says. “I don’t understand it, frankly; I’m just baffled. Kudos to the Ecology Action Centre for raising the alarm, because most of us who worked on that thing just thought it was a done deal: we did our part, HRM would do their part, they’re moving forward, and the two would compliment each other.
“What happened between that plan and this current proposal, I don’t understand. It certainly would raise alarm bells in my mind if I were a councillor, or if I were a citizen of HRM—it does as a citizen of the province of Nova Scotia.”
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2009.
Follow oh, follow oh, follow oh, follow! Follow the donation trail!
I think the word FORMER says it all.
When he was the Minister he wouldn’t donate any moneys to the City for this project, now that he lost that job, he like many other PCs just sit and whine….
If they were any good at the job they had they might still have it.
But, its so much easier to blame Peter Kelly for not spending this money while the city is in middle of trying to deal with the budget, Can’t save money and spend hand over fist.
The former minister should know that, after all he was in the Government,,,,They spent like there was no tomorrow and hid it from us.
What was the Tory track record on the environment and wilderness issues during his stay?
Cranky– imo, Mark Parent was the best Environment minister NS has ever had. He brought a lot of things into the Environmental Goals & Sustainable Prosperity Act that wouldn’t have been there without him, and he worked hard to make sure that the wilderness areas that were designated were actual wildernesses, and not compromised. The 12 percent target was his doing.
Well, any gov’t official who has a good name within the environmental community probably does have his shit together.
Not that I’m against protecting Blue MTN but maybe the current gov’ts (municipal/provincial) can look at dumping some money into the 2100 hectares of Long Lake Provincial Park, maybe improve the parking at least so that cyclists don’t have to dodge a 1-2km stretch of cars parked in the bike lane. That would be a good start. At least Long Lake Provincial Park is owned and paid for. Just a thought.
Slick, you are not very slick if you think Rodney hid the spending from us.
It was out in the open and subject to criticism from all quarters.
Perhaps you were asleep or not paying attention.
I have not met a Minister more humble and more intelligent till date.. he truly cared about the environment and any one says otherwise is a fool and don’t know him at all.
Cranky– the neat thing about Blue Mountain-Birch Coves Lake is that the city proposal, as outlined in the regional plan, calls for a real city “urban wilderness park.” It means several public access points, including a huge parking lot off Bayers Lake, some canoe entrances, interpretive signs and maps, etc, but leaving the bulk of the park completely wild. It’s a really, really good proposal— can’t say enough about it– like nothing else in all of Canada, so close to a city. And really, in terms of cost/benefit, it’s a no-brainer.
As for Long Lake– you’re right: there are all sorts of needs, especially with regard to parking. Councillors (Stephen Adams, especially) have been bitching about that a lot lately, and pushing on provincial authorities. Hopefully, that will bring results.
But for BMBCL, the province doesn’t have to do anything more— they already did their side. Everything else is dependent on the city.
The city is not in the business of building wilderness parks. That is the purview of the province or the feds. I do not want one thin dime of my property tax dollars paid to HRM to go towards this, especially when HRM does not even own the land.
Yeah, according to the Chebucto News, Steve Adams recently met up with DNR officials to see about Long Lake. If you ever want to follow up on this park, which has the potential to be a massive resource for HRM if it ever gets managed properly, contact Brian Kinsman at the DNR office in Belmont (Truro).