Photo: Contributed

South Okanagan - West Kootenay MP Richard Cannings spoke at length in Parliament this week about a potential national park in the South Okanagan.

Cannings pointed to the Rouge National Urban Park, about a half an hour drive north of Toronto, as a prime example of how a park can come to fruition in the South Okanagan despite existing land uses such as ranching.

Rouge Park was nationalized in 2015, although it is surrounded by and contains some farms, old gravel pits and other developments.

“It wasn’t a wilderness, that was my point, we have a national park created in a landscape that is very complex in terms of land ownership… but its habitat that is very valuable on a national sense,” Cannings told Castanet News.

He said direct comparisons can be drawn between Rouge National Urban Park and a proposal in the South Okanagan. Parliament passed Bill C-18 this week, which amended the Rouge Park Act, expanding its borders, but also allowing new parks to be defined in “a broader manner.”

“Here we have a situation in the Okanagan of a park that people are trying to establish in a very complex mosaic of land ownership and development,” Cannings said.

He added that a park’s mandate is simple - to protect an ecosystem's integrity.  

“Right now there is a lot of grazing going on, and there has been for over 100 years,” Cannings said, acknowledging some ecologists don’t believe the two can coexist.

But he views himself as a bit more pragmatic.

“If this is what it takes, I certainly don’t want to see ranching families lose their livelihoods and have to turn to something else after doing this for generations.”

He expects that if B.C. decides to turn over the land required for a park, most ranchers would see little change.

The provincial government has dragged its feet on the project since Parks Canada released a positive feasibility study in 2011, with local MLA Linda Larson publicly opposed to the project, until last month when the province announced talks would begin between B.C., Parks Canada and First Nations.