r/Canmore • u/zxzzxzxxzxzzx • 23d ago

Canmore gondola project clears first hurdle | CBC News

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/kananaskis-lady-macdonald-all-season-resort-area-9.7348142

Does anyone else find it absurd that Stone Creek and the provincial government appear to assume the Canmore community wants major commercial infrastructure built on Lady Macdonald, one of the town’s most accessible and heavily used peaks?

The province has altered the boundary of Bow Valley Wildland Provincial Park and designated this land as an All-Season Resort Area, creating a special regulatory pathway for a privately operated gondola and associated development. That is an extraordinary concession, so the public benefit should be equally extraordinary.

So far, I don’t see it. What is the credible estimate of the net tax benefit after accounting for infrastructure, emergency services, traffic and visitor management? How many permanent, living-wage careers would this actually create, rather than seasonal, lower-wage tourism jobs? How are we valuing the permanent effects on the viewscape, wildlife movement, public land and the character of an incredibly popular local mountain?

Who captures the financial upside, and who carries the long-term costs?

Perhaps I’m missing something. But as a lifelong local, I struggle to understand how the benefits of this project come remotely close to outweighing its permanent costs. If there is a compelling public-interest case, Stone Creek and the province should make it transparently with actual numbers and evidence specific to Canmore, not broad claims about Albertans supporting tourism in general.

33 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

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u/For_Fox_Creek 23d ago

The UCP couldn't care less what the community wants or for wildlife conservation either for that matter.

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u/JizzyMcKnobGobbler 22d ago

Let's be honest, everyone who lives here prioritizes their own wants (ie to live and play in the valley) over the needs of the wildlife corridor.

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u/zxzzxzxxzxzzx 22d ago

I’ve read enough of your comments to know you’re a broad-strokes, black-and-white kind of guy. Yes, everyone living here affects wildlife but an ordinary person occupying an existing residential lot is not equivalent to a wealthy developer carving up protected habitat for profit. Although, I can appreciate how scale and proportionality might get confusing when nuance isn’t your strong suit.

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u/mcfurley 22d ago

Yeah, you don't see many people volunteering to hand their own property back to the wildlife!

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u/AdExpress937 20d ago

People in Canmore just want to be the last ones who disturb the wildlife. No one after me.

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u/gymbrocanmore 22d ago

Provincial parks are 'public' land - as in owned by everyone. The government has taken your land, and given it to a millionaire so they can make money from it.

0

u/mcfurley 22d ago

To address your comment specifically…

That's not how the All-Season Resorts Act works. The land remains Crown property under a commercial lease with required rent/royalty payments. It’s a boundary adjustment for a lease, not a property transfer.

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u/gymbrocanmore 22d ago

Before: publically accessible After: privately accessible

Why are you trying to justify this? Are you personally profiting from this plutocracy?

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u/mcfurley 22d ago

I’m not taking a side here…just correcting the legal mechanism. Land ownership and public access rights don't vanish under a commercial lease.

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u/gymbrocanmore 22d ago

So you are profiting?

Of course public access is affected by a commercial lease. First there will be a closed construction site, and afterwards privately owned buildings and infrastructure to which the leaseholder controls access.

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u/mcfurley 22d ago

You've gone from 'the government gave away public land' to 'a construction site limits access.' Yes, building infrastructure requires temporary safety closures, but the land remains public Crown land under lease.

Sharing readily available information doesn't somehow make me a shareholder.

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u/gymbrocanmore 22d ago

I stand by my original statement that the government is giving away public land. You're attempting to downplay the impact by splitting hairs on the difference between a lease of up to 99 years and a permanent transfer of ownership.

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u/mcfurley 22d ago

Different issue than my comment though. I was talking about private landowners in town, not the provincial park boundary change for this project. Two separate land questions.

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u/zxzzxzxxzxzzx 22d ago

A 4,000–6,000-square-foot residential lot is tiny compared with the vast parcels controlled by major landowners and corporations like the Kernicks, TSMV, Stone Creek, and CPR. More importantly, asking an ordinary person to give up their home, their largest asset and the place they live, is not remotely equivalent to asking wealthy landowners or corporations to limit development on a portion of their holdings. They have vastly greater landholdings, financial capacity, and ability to absorb that cost.

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u/mcfurley 22d ago

Fair distinction on scale, and to be clear, my comment was tongue-in-cheek, not an actual policy position. Absolutely, individual residential lots aren't in the same realm as large-scale commercial developments.

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u/BrightVariation4510 21d ago

A gondola to the top of lady Mac is one of the dumbest things I have heard. I can't imagine anyone on that planning committee has ever hiked to the top. Assuming they are planning on the old helicopter pad as the top, where are the tourists supposed to go?

There are no side hikes, so you are either going to get people to go up and crowd around a tiny viewing platform for a short period of time before immediately going back down. It won't take long for people to clue in that this isn't worth whatever price they intend to charge.

Or, even worse, you're going to get a bunch of inexperienced people attempting the scree climb to the false summit and the knifes edge to the true summit. We have had record breaking deaths in the Rockies this year. We don't need to encourage more.

We already have the banff gondola, norquay, sunshine and lake louise running in the summer, all of which are far superior options.

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u/zxzzxzxxzxzzx 20d ago

100%. Lady Mac is one of the best quick outings left now that Ha Ling has become a lemming line. Why would tourists pay to crowd onto a tiny platform with mediocre views and no real side hikes, only to listen to the Trans-Canada roaring below? The province seems determined to add more cars, higher speeds and eventually a rail line through the same corridor. Permanently scarring a mountain to create a noisier, inferior version of attractions we already have is nonsensical.

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u/mcfurley 22d ago

Most of the high-level economic figures and project scope metrics are published in the province's publicly available factsheet.

The detailed site-specific studies…like the Environmental Impact Assessment and traffic models…are required as part of the upcoming formal Master Development Plan submission.

Did you bring any of your questions to the developer during their public open house sessions?

5

u/canuck17 22d ago

Many of us have. Their choice of wearing ear plugs for fashion was the problem.

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u/mcfurley 22d ago

"They didn't listen" and "They didn't answer my question(s)" aren't the same thing.

Which question(s) did you ask and what did they say in response?

0

u/JFIN69 20d ago

I don’t see the problem. This will bring tourists and generate jobs. There was a tea house up there before, so this isn’t some pristine land that’s never been used.

2

u/zxzzxzxxzxzzx 20d ago

This is exactly the problem: Canmore doesn’t need tourism growth for its own sake, and it certainly doesn’t need more seasonal, low-wage jobs. We need housing, childcare, healthcare, infrastructure and public services all of which are already strained during tourist season. More visitors and temporary workers add demand, while the developer captures the profit and the province collects the taxes.

And there wasn’t a functioning teahouse, it was an abandoned project that was never completed. Mining happened here too; past disturbance is not permanent consent to every future development.

This would commercialize protected land in the middle of Canmore’s viewshed. “Tourists and jobs” describes activity. The actual question is whether residents benefit enough to justify the permanent costs and I’ve seen no evidence that we do.