I’ve lived my entire life in Alberta. I can’t think of another place I’d rather call home. A passion for the mountains and an outdoor recreation lifestyle led my wife and I to uproot our young family from Edmonton in 2005 and move to Canmore.
I’ve benefited from the restorative benefits of being in nature. So, when I read Florence Williams’ book The Nature Fix during the height of the pandemic, it reaffirmed for me that being in nature reduces stress, restores mental clarity, and fosters feelings of well-being. It has made me much more conscious about my connection with nature ever since.
There is little denying that many of the special places Albertans treasure have never been busier. This is as much a function of today’s urbanized society seeking more opportunities to connect with nature as it is that Alberta’s population has nearly doubled over the past 30 years. By contrast, the province’s trail systems, provincial parks, campsites and tourism-oriented outdoor recreation resorts have not kept pace. Not even close.
The experiences available to us in our backyard are diminishing in quality. Instead of being able to readily escape to nature, we increasingly find ourselves having to plan to get ahead of crowds and congestion.
While Alberta boasts some iconic attractions, the province lacks sufficient year-round product to support demand. Moreover, the resorts within our national parks are extremely limited in their ability to expand their products given stringent federal restrictions.
A properly conceived all-seasons resort policy, rooted in sustainable development principles, could address this.
This gap between the growing societal need for outdoor wellness options and the shortfall has contributed to a type of nature deficit. The good news is governments have the tools to address it.
Take British Columbia. The province’s thriving, all-season resort industry is evidence of what can be achieved when you create a policy framework that aligns nature and outdoor recreation experiences with investment and job creation efforts. Their vision is to develop B.C. as a world-class, all-season resort destination that promotes sustainable land use and commits to social responsibility and environmental stewardship.
Over the past 30 years, our neighbours to the west have catalyzed one of the most progressive, tourism-supporting policy frameworks in the country – one that has led to the development of over 13 all-season resorts. This helps explain why B.C. annually generates more than $7 billion in annual tourism receipts over Alberta.
Not surprisingly, B.C. is also a national leader in promoting evidence-based nature prescriptions (PaRX) – a novel, grassroots initiative driven by the BC Parks Foundation that delivers personalized nature prescriptions for those interested in improving their health. Through its all-seasons resorts policy, B.C. implicitly recognizes that there is a correlation between Crown-land-based activity and its ability to support a healthier society.
One of the strongest arguments for developing all-seasons resorts in Alberta, and outside our national parks system, is its potential to diversify the economy and create jobs. Increasing visitor volumes also increases the need for more jobs. Both new and legacy resort destinations benefit.
An important dimension of tourism employment is that, unlike many capital and labour-intensive industries, technology has a limited application in driving productivity. This industry always has been, and will always be, an experience-driven undertaking, reliant on humans in the service of making other humans’ lives better.
There can be little doubt that Alberta’s lack of intentionality has helped accelerate B.C.’s robust outdoor recreation aims through the development of all-seasons resorts. So much so that the leakage in tourism spending by Albertans in B.C. is now estimated at $1.5 billion annually: a deficit, by the way, that has surged nearly $300 million over the past four years coming out of the pandemic. This is money that could – and should – be fueling Alberta’s tourism economy and supporting the creation of new businesses and jobs.
As the Tourism Industry Association of Alberta (TIAA) identified in its 2021 Crown Land Outdoor Recreation Economy study, the province needs to more purposefully build a supportive Crown land policy framework that acknowledges outdoor recreation and tourism investment as an industry, one prioritized for growth. This is a point that was picked up in the province’s Higher Ground Tourism Sector Strategy, released earlier this year.
The notion that a province’s economic policy objectives can work in support of its goals to create a healthy society should be a bedrock principle that guides all future economic planning considerations. Over the years, Alberta’s legislative and regulatory framework has viewed tourism and outdoor recreation as a passive form of economic activity: a policy file to be run off the side of a land use manager’s desk in between work on other sector-advancing economic strategies that have had higher economic priority to government.
Alberta is at a crossroads. The opportunity to develop an all-seasons resort industry is much more than the province attempting to reclaim some deserved market share from B.C. – it’s about building a healthy, resilient economy that benefits all Albertans over the long term. So, it is time to turn our attention to doing what Alberta does well: innovate, create, and apply gritty determination in the pursuit of an audacious goal. Let’s declare a clear intention, and then move swiftly to develop the resorts, products, and experiences Albertans and international visitors are looking for – and, while we’re at it, let’s repatriate a few of Albertans’ visitor spending dollars being left in B.C.
Darren Reeder is president and CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of Alberta (TIAA).