Poor reporting threatens national parks ELIZABETH AIRD Southam Newspapers OTTAWA - The auditor general says Parks Canada is endangering the future health of Canada's national parks and is not providing Parliament with accurate reports of its activities. It may also fail to complete a national park system promised by 2000. Parliament can't even properly assess what Parks Canada is doing, Auditor General Denis Desautels says in his annual report tabled Tuesday. Parks Canada, in its most recent report in 1994, said it had acquired all the land for two new parks in Saskatchewan and Ontario, but it had not. And contrary to its legal obligation under the National Parks Act, it did not file a report at all in 1992. Parks Canada is also failing to carry out some basic environmental stewardship. It does not routinely collect scientific data needed to keep tabs on the ecological health of Canada's 38 national parks, yet it is pushing ahead on advertising campaigns that are aimed at drawing millions more visitors. "We are suggesting quite strongly that Parks Canada should have a better handle on the amount of traffic that each of the parks can sustain before the parks suffer ecological damage," Desautels told a news conference Tuesday. Alberta's Bow Valley, for example, has already been "significantly impaired" by human traffic, the report says. "Nevertheless, a recent initiative of the Department of Canadian Heritage . . . heavily promoted the Bow Valley as an attraction." Banff, Jasper, Kootenay in Alberta and B.C.'s Yoho national parks are at particular risk. Visitors increased 25.7 per cent at these parks between 1989 and 1995, compared to almost 14 per cent for other parks. Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, who is responsible for parks, said a new environmental and traffic analysis done at Banff will be applied to every park. She did not express concern when asked about Parks Canada's reports to Parliament. "What we take from the auditor general's report is a push to complete the park system and frankly, the concerns about the ecosystem management have already been addressed." Asked if Parks Canada's reports of its activities have been misleading, the Desautels replied: "Obviously we have concerns about the completeness of the picture put to Parliament." Some of the auditor general's other findings and recommendations: Parks Canada needs to be more aggressive in getting support for new national parks. With just three years to go before the 2000 deadline for completing the national park system, only 24 of Canada's 39 natural regions are represented by 38 parks. Negotiations with provinces and Aboriginal Peoples to establish more parks are taking place in only seven of the 15 remaining regions. Industrial development threatens many sites that are candidates for parks, again because Parks Canada is not moving quickly enough to get provincial and local support to protect land. Parks Canada has only four of a planned 29 marine conservation areas, with no action plan and no target date to complete a national marine park system. Park management plans sometimes emphasized economic and social concerns more than environmental health. Parks Canada administers 38 national parks covering approximately 225,000 square kilometres. More than 25 million people visited the parks in 1994-95. The service's budget for 1996-97 is $368 million. - Ottawa Citizen