The BC Parks License Plate Program - Where does the money go?
What are all of these 220 projects I ask?
"These funds support diverse projects related to Conservation, Community Engagement and Education, and Indigenous Relations.".
I don't see the word "recreation" anywhere in this description. The word "conservation" is of course ever-present throughout their website, but the word "recreation" seems to be treated like the name "Lord Voldemort" (the word that must not be named or funded).
As much as some of the more conservation obsessed BC Parks staff might like to dump the "recreation" part of their dual mandate of Recreation and Conservation into the trash bin, the dual mandate is still BC Parks Policy and is the agency's founding mission.
Conservation and Recreation values can coexist. This is the challenging and vital balancing act that BC Parks is tasked with.
Our Parks are not the personal conservation plaything of a civil service afflicted with bias and tunnel vision, and the current attitude of "us against the citizens" must end (reference the BC Parks motto: "protecting the parks from the people"). I suspect that this bias is germinated in our Universities and their environmental and planning degree programs in which these employees more-often-than-not originate from.
Selectively directing our money almost exclusively towards conservation and politically correct feel-good projects, while quashing and financially starving such things as new hiking trails and access is not acceptable.
I would also like to see transparent decision making from BC Parks rather than the ongoing surprises and edicts emerging unannounced from the shadowy bowels of the civil service as it occurs today.