To the Editor:
South Okanagan-Similkameen National Park Network response to the article: June 27, 2013 – Businessman responds to National Park Letter
For ten years, HNZ Helicopters has diligently worked to block a new national park reserve despite enormous interest from business, tourism, towns, regional district, and First Nations. HNZ gave reasons, in this paper, for their opposition.
We believe the national park reserve cannot be held ransom by one outspoken organization that continues to misrepresent the facts. Our response follows. (Related correspondence: https://sosnationalpark.wordpress.com/)
1. HNZ believes they should have “an unreserved guarantee that [their] business can have unlimited and unfettered access” if a national park is established. HNZ are landing helicopters on Crown land and no government, as stewards of the land, would ever provide this type or level of access.
2. HNZ says a national park will ‘control and restrict’ them. Yet, their current operations are controlled and restricted by a 20-page Provincial Park Use Permit with a 6-page Management Plan. Parks Canada has offered them, in writing, a similar permit.
3. HNZ says a national park would “significantly restrict our ability to provide our core product.” Yet, they omit this information: “Parks Canada is prepared to permit the School of Advanced Flight Training to continue in the national park reserve...subject to our negotiating a satisfactory management agreement. . . that would establish terms and conditions for the flight training activity for the mutual benefit of both parties. . . with the intent of addressing your requirements for a safe and viable operation.”
4. HNZ doesn’t want to be ‘controlled by the National Park Act’, ‘ecological assessments’, and that ‘visitors to the park might impact on HNZ business’. Yet their current Provincial contract requires compliance with the BC Parks Act, contains 3 pages of ecological requirements, and can be ‘cancelled or modified if conflicts arise with others users or wildlife.’
5. HNZ thinks environmental assessments are threatening, yet they fail to disclose this sentence: “The environmental assessment will help to inform the terms and conditions of the new permit; it will not change Parks Canada’s decision to accommodate Canadian Helicopter’s flight training school.
6. HNZ says the “area is sufficiently protected” though it contains both Crown and large parcels of private land that can be sold and subdivided - often to developers and offshore investors.
HNZ is important to the region. The provincial and federal governments need to ensure their continued operation in the national park – under permit and with a management plan, as they currently operate.
Yours truly, Doreen Olson, Coordinator, South Okanagan-Similkameen National Park Network