Questions are fluttering around funding to Lois Hole Centennial Provincial Park after the release of the provincial budget.
On Tuesday, NDP Opposition Leader Rachel Notley paid a visit to St. Albert and stopped at the park to meet some of the members of the Big Lake Environment Support Society (BLESS) to discuss what the provincial budget could mean for the park.
Notley met with St. Albert NDP MLA Marie Renaud, who organized the visit to the city, along with Al Henry, president of BLESS and Linda Brain, vice-president of BLESS.
Lois Hole Park was given $160,000 by the former NDP government in March to add new trails and accessible washrooms to the park just west of St. Albert.
Notley and Renaud toured the park together with Henry, who said recent cuts to spending from the province makes BLESS unsure if the projects they had planned on will be completed.
“With the budget that was just (released), there ain't nothing that anybody can be 100 per cent positive about, so we will find out,” Henry said.
“It was approved. Whether or not it's going to come from the new government is questionable.”
Renaud decided to bring Notley out to Lois Hole Park because she believes it’s a really unique urban feature that a lot of people don’t know about and is concerned with the new government’s plans to tackle climate change.
“We know that parks funding as a whole has been reduced. We know that money for monitoring and regulating development to ensure that it's done in a sustainable and accountable way – that has been significantly cut, whether you're talking about the AER (Alberta Energy Regulator), whether you're talking about the Ministry of Environment,” Notley said.
Henry noted that with a reduced amount of funding to municipalities, he worries about the rebuild of the park viewing platform that is slated for construction this winter. BLESS raised $100,000 for the platform and the city is spending another $340,000 to get the job done.
The president of BLESS said because they are “just little guys,” they are hoping to sneak under the radar and not have the park funding cut.
Henry hopes the platform will get built and will be finished before International Migratory Bird Day, which takes place in April. Lois Hole Park is the fifth most important birding area in Alberta and the event brings in hundreds of tourists from across the world.
