The process of establishing a national park reserve in the South Okanagan requires numerous steps, but it won’t be a case of reinventing the wheel.

That’s the word from Kevin McNamee, director Protected Areas Establishment Branch with Parks Canada, the public servant responsible for the process, who has worked under successive federal governments.

An important step in the process of establishing a national park is a feasibility study, but McNamee said a study done in 2010 as well as one done by the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA) in 2011-12 have already done much of the work.

“We’re going to look at those reports and see what is still legitimate and what we need to do over,” said McNamee in an interview following Friday’s announcement that the federal and provincial governments are restarting the process in partnership with the ONA.

“So, we’re not going back to square one, but we need to look at what is the boundary that we would recommend, and how we would deal with the various issues over the history of this project,” he said.

McNamee reiterated that the federal and provincial ministers at the announcement were clear that there needs to be public engagement.

“They would be looking to involve stakeholders, communities, the public,” he said. “We can look at all of those things concurrently.”

McNamee said the governments will be discussing the form that public engagement will take.

“Above all I think all parties want to see certainty,” he said. “This project goes back to 2002. It’s been 15 years. So how can we get through this in such a way that it’s efficient and yet deals with all the engagement issues?”

After coming to a conclusion about boundaries, the governments will need to look at various uses in the park, a land assembly strategy, the governance model and how the three levels of government will work together, McNamee said.

They would then reach, sign and ratify agreements between the governments covering these issues, including the transfer of lands between governments.

Then, the remaining steps would be to protect the area through legislation and to put in place a budget to establish, develop and operate a park.

“We are here for the long haul, so we want to look at an investment that is ongoing,” he said.

McNamee notes that the lands are intensely used and said the governments would need to work out a transition strategy.

“We have ranchland, we have all kinds of uses that occur on the lands, so when the legislation comes in – we’re talking about a number of years away – we need to have a transition strategy to deal with various uses,” he said.

McNamee declined to speculate on how many years the process might take.

“It depends on the kind of work that we’re able to accomplish over the next year of two in terms of how quickly we can resolve the issues, set the boundary and get into negotiations,” he said.

McNamee said Parks Canada officials were “extremely pleased” to have the three levels of government involved in the announcement, to be able to do the announcement in the South Okanagan-Similkameen and to see the sense of commitment that came through from the ministers and leaders.

“They want to move forward, but clearly in a respectful way,” he said. “I think as people who have been watching this process for many years, they were very excited to see that.”

RICHARD McGUIRE

Osoyoos Times