Chelsea – The Gatineau Park Protection Committee is commending Ottawa-Centre MP Paul Dewar for introducing a bill that would give Gatineau Park the legal status needed to ensure its long-term protection.

“Gatineau Park is the only federal park that isn’t a national park, and this bill will provide it with the same legal protection and parliamentary oversight enjoyed by all other Canadian parks,” today said GPPC Co-Chair Andrew McDermott. “Such action is long overdue, and Mr. Dewar’s initiative is giving environmentalists everywhere good reason to celebrate Earth Day,” said Mr. McDermott.

For nearly forty years, concerned citizens and environmental groups have requested that Gatineau Park be given legal status to protect it from unsuitable encroachments, developments and sell offs. In the absence of such protection, the National Capital Commission (NCC), which runs the park, has removed nearly eight square kilometres of park land, while allowing construction of 117 new houses and 5 new roads within its boundaries.

“The NCC has proven time and again it can’t be trusted to administer Gatineau Park without parliamentary oversight: it has sold off park land, destroyed historically significant buildings, misrepresented park history, and failed to assert its authority over the park,” said Mr. McDermott. “So Mr. Dewar deserves high praise for this latest attempt to put order where confusion and anarchy have been running wild,” Mr. McDermott said.

This bill is Mr. Dewar’s second attempt to provide Gatineau Park with protective legislation. The principles represented by his bill have drawn widespread support from the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, as well as from Conservative, Liberal and New Democratic parliamentarians.

Mr. Dewar’s bill is the latest incarnation of a measure first tabled in the Commons by the Honourable Ed Broadbent in November 2005. It would amend the National Capital Act to include the park’s boundaries, provide the NCC with a right of first refusal on private property sales in the park, and ensure its territory can only be reduced by Act of Parliament.