When is your home NOT your castle? When it’s in a national park — of course.Jasper residents are facing multiple hurdles to rebuilding their homes and businesses due to antiquated development laws dating back to 1885 and the creation of Banff National Park.That’s when the government of Sir John A. Macdonald imposed deliberately onerous land use policies designed to discourage development to this day. Those carried on when Parks Canada was officially formed in 1911 under the Dominion Forest Reserves and Parks Act to become the world’s first national park service.Fast forward 100 years and those same policies are sure to cause a new and potentially debilitating barriers to rehabilitating Jasper, where residents must three separate and distinct sets of permits before than can put a shovel in the ground.And even then, it’s not your dirt you’re digging into. That’s because everything between Heaven and Earth — apart from the building — belongs to Bonnie King Charlie..“It’s a pretty slow process to get development approved,” property lawyer Jessica Reed told The Canadian Press. “The actual owner of the land, even if you looked at the land title, is the King himself.”According to the Parks Canada website, they would need separate building and demolition permits; approvals under the Architectural Motif Guidelines; and adhere to both the National Park and Alberta building codes. That’s notwithstanding any other permits and zoning requirements under the Town of Jasper Land Use Policy which is mandated under Alberta’s Municipal Government Act.Depending on where they’re located, new homes are subject to maximum square footage allotments and height restrictions. Building in the mountain parks also require minimum specifications, specifically for roofs and environmentally sustainable building materials. Those who would rather skip the hassle and take a cash payout wouldn’t want to, simply because the land the lots are on are held by the Crown — in King Charles’ name — under long term leases and they would receive no compensation for the land value..Leases can’t be directly transferred to third parties; they have to be reissued to the parks service. And Parks Canada can block a sale for essentially any reason.And assuming someone wants to rebuild under a new mortgage, banks are leery of lending out money with terms longer than the remainder of the existing land lease — which in theory is a maximum of 42 years but in reality is less than 20 years depending on when it was granted. Earlier this week, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith urged the government to relax some of the red tape to speed up the rebuilding process..She asking Ottawa to consider providing federal funding under the Housing Accelerator Fund for Jasper evacuees who have lost their homes. Smith also wants the federal government to explore an emergency wage subsidy and the suspension of lease payments for businesses who have lost a vital source of tourist revenue.She brought up the point when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau toured Hinton on Monday.“I think all of us took away how important it was to have unified command — having the municipal government as well as our government, as well as the federal parks — all working together,” Smith told reporters. “When I spoke with the prime minister, I said it would be my hope that that would continue through reconstruction.”
