BOW VALLEY – A special provincial designation for tourism-based communities will have to wait.
Minister of Tourism and Sport Joseph Schow confirmed the province has little interest in the immediate future for such a designation, but will continue to work with such communities to address their needs.
“I don't expect there to be any resort designations for any of the new resorts or communities,” he said in an interview Nov. 7. “We always want to work with communities where possible to make sure getting the support they need.
“Whether they're Jasper, Banff, Canmore or Lake Louise, you name it, we want to be there to help them, but I don't foresee us looking at this and creating new resort municipalities.”
It puts longstanding efforts by Banff, Canmore and Jasper on ice for the foreseeable future in their attempts to gain a special status to help fund added infrastructure costs related to hosting millions of tourists each year.
Banff has been lobbying for a special tourism-based status for more than two decades, with Canmore and Jasper joining their efforts.
The topic of obtaining resort municipality status in each of the three communities has been an ongoing discussion spanning successive provincial governments and more than 20 different ministers, including ministers with municipal affairs, tourism and culture, and the treasury board.
The three municipalities have discussed various strategies over the years from lobbying for an amendment to the Municipal Government Act so they would be legally recognized as tourism-based communities. In the leadup to the 2023 provincial election, the three municipalities hired prominent firm New West Public Affairs to assist in their lobbying.
Canmore Mayor Sean Krausert said the ongoing advocacy has been slowed since wildfire devastated Jasper in July, destroying a third of the townsite’s buildings.
He said Banff, Canmore, Jasper, Sylvan Lake and Drumheller – the latter which have joined the efforts in the last year – will continue to discuss such advocacy work in the coming months, but nothing is planned at the moment.
“With the events of the summer, we put things on the backburner and now we’re going to be getting together to assess our next steps at some point in the near future,” he said.
The province has ambitious goals to grow tourism to $25 billion annually by 2035.
The strategy was released last February and focuses on rural tourism growth, increasing tourism and access, diversifying tourism to year-round options, aiding in labour shortages and increasing access to Indigenous tourism operators.
A goal was to establish year-round resort zones and expand seasonal recreational areas into all-season resorts, which Schow introduced as a bill in the legislature Nov. 7. If passed, it would add privately-owned resorts through long-term leases on Crown land to expand tourism in Alberta.
He said it would streamline existing processes under the Ministry of Tourism and Sport, and help grow visitation spending in the province.
“We want to see some incredible plans come forward that will give us a chance to demonstrate the best Alberta has to offer,” he said at a media conference. “These incredible four-season resort products will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, but we’ll also let the independent businesses – the investors – determine the risk on their projects.”
Crown lands are protected parks and lands under the Public Lands Act and comprise about 60 per cent of the province.
In the leadup to the 2023 provincial election, a 2022 report from Verum Consulting indicated the mountain towns of Canmore, Banff and Jasper generated $2.3 billion in visitor expenditures in 2019. It contributed $2 billion in GDP and $112 million in taxes to the provincial economy.
It indicated the three municipalities have limited fiscal capacity to generate additional revenues to support visitor populations, although Banff and Jasper do have some ability to increase residential taxes to be more in line with the average of comparable communities.
“If Banff and Jasper were to target the average residential property taxes per dwelling (similar to Canmore’s ranking which is very close to the average of the municipalities), Banff would generate an incremental $1.5 million, and Jasper would generate an incremental $1.1 million in residential taxes,” the report stated.
The report found Banff, Canmore and Jasper spend well above the per capita average when compared to other Alberta tourism communities on infrastructure needs, varying from public transit to waste management.
The 2021 average per capita expenditures of 33 comparable tourism-based municipalities in Alberta was $3,044, where Banff was found to have an average per capita spend of $5,359, $4,463 for Jasper, and $4,126 for Canmore.
A tourism economic impact study of the three mountain towns in 2016 found aggregate direct tourism expenditures in the three communities were more than $1.5 billion. Banff generated $885.5 million, Jasper generated expenditures of $318.4 million and the remaining $344.9 million was generated in Canmore.
The provincial government has previously been aggressive in increasing tourism. In the 2021 provincial budget, the Alberta government aimed to double tourism spending to hit more than $16 billion annually in 2030 as part of a tourism recovery plan coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The provincial tourism levy has been a key source of revenue, which collected from hotels and other lodgings.
Though the levy took a significant dip during the COVID-19 pandemic – hitting as low as $25 million collected in 2020-21 – it has surpassed pre-2019 levels.
The levy collected $59 million in 2021-22 and $104 million in 2022-23.
The 2024-25 levy is forecasted to earn $119 million and $124 million in 2026-27
In 2022, the province’s visitor economy was worth $10.7 billion. The 2024 provincial budget forecasted tourism spending would grow to $13.2 billion in 2025-26 and $14 billion in 2026-27.
In 2023, former Banff-Kananaskis MLA Miranda Rosin brought forward a bill that could’ve designated Banff, Canmore and Jasper as a special tourism designation. The bill, however, was ultimately squashed due to the provincial election.
According to Travel Alberta, 47 per cent of international visitor revenue in 2019 was generated in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Overall, the Rockies accounted for about 25 per cent of visitor revenue in the province.
In other provinces, special designations for tourism-based communities are common.
The Resort Municipality Initiative (RMI), a program in neighbouring British Columbia, is designed to help small, tourism-based municipalities build and diversify their tourism infrastructure. In 2022, the B.C. government committed to providing $39 million over three years for the RMI to fund infrastructure projects.
At least 14 municipalities in B.C. have been able to secure resort municipality status, including the nearby towns of Golden, Radium, Kimberley, Fernie and Revelstoke.
A funding formula based on the number of accommodations in each town divides the revenue collected by the province among the towns.
Prince Edward Island also has the Resort Municipality of Stanley Bridge, Hope River, Bayview, Cavendish and North Rustico on the north end of the island.
The Alberta government, however, has pointed to provincial grants such as the Local Government Fiscal Framework – formerly the Municipal Sustainability Initiative – as funding to assist municipalities.
In the Bow Valley, residents have often felt overwhelmed by the amount of tourism in the mountain communities.
Banff regularly hits its vehicle threshold of 24,000 a day during the summer, while Roam transit has experienced significant overloaded buses throughout its network. Last summer, Banff averaged 27,323 vehicles per day in July and August compared to 26,862 during the same months in 2023.
In Kananaskis, popular trailhead parking lots are often filled beyond capacity over long weekends and busier times of year to the point the municipal governments of Kananaskis Improvement District and MD of Bighorn finished a feasibility study to implement public transit options for the area.
The Kananaskis Country pass was introduced in 2021 as a funding model to aid in infrastructure needs in the popular provincial parks. In 2022, the pass collected about $11 million but provincial governments have been murky on how the money is being spent.
Jasper is also in the beginning of its rebuild roughly one-third of the townsite’s buildings after wildfire destroyed. Both the provincial and federal governments have contributed significant resources to recovery, but it could take years for the tourism community return to normal.
VISITATION STATISTICS
NATIONAL PARK VISITATION APRIL 1, 2020 to MARCH 31, 2021
- Banff National Park: 3 million
- Jasper National Park: 1.69 million
- Kootenay National Park: 359,301
- Yoho National Park: 435,874
NATIONAL PARK VISITATION APRIL 1, 2021 to MARCH 31, 2022
- Banff National Park: 3.67 million
- Jasper National Park: 2.1 million
- Kootenay National Park: 510,200
- Yoho National Park: 537,533
NATIONAL PARK VISITATION APRIL 1, 2022 to MARCH 31, 2023
- Banff National Park: 4.13 million
- Jasper National Park: 2.4 million
- Kootenay National Park: 574,126
- Yoho National Park: 663,878
NATIONAL PARK VISITATION APRIL 1, 2023 to MARCH 31, 2024
- Banff National Park: 4.28 million
- Jasper National Park: 2.4 million
- Kootenay National Park: 561,167
- Yoho National Park: 694,867
KANANASKIS COUNTRY VISITATION
- 2015: 3.59 million
- 2016: 3.7 million
- 2017: 3.73 million
- 2018: 3.79 million
- 2019: 4.1 million
- 2020: 5.4 million
- 2022: 4.2 million
- 2023: 4.7 million
