Alberta Wants to Be More Like British Columbia. America Should Too
Are we really going to sit here while Canada kicks our ass?
From backwater to global beacon
Thirty years ago, British Columbia was home to exactly two 1,500-plus-acre ski areas: one was Whistler, the other was Blackcomb. Sun Peaks covered all of 783 acres; Kimberley, 425; Panorama, 300. Kicking Horse was a town bump called Whitetooth served by one T-bar and a double chair. Revelstoke, then know as Mount Mackenzie, had a ropetow, a T-bar, and two double chairs running up 2,000 feet of vert.
Today, B.C. may well be the epicenter of quality North American skiing, home to 11 ski resorts topping 1,500 acres. Whistler-Blackcomb is a united, 8,171-acre monster. Sun Peaks is the second-largest ski area in Canada, with 4,270 acres over three peaks. Kimberley has blown up to 1,800 acres; Panorama to nearly 3,000. Revelstoke has erupted to 5,620 vertical feet, the tallest rise on the continent. Kicking Horse, now 4,314 vertical feet sprawling over 3,400 acres, is an international freeride destination. Most of these resorts run modern lift fleets and rise from a densely developed base area. Individually or as a collective, they rival anything in the United States.
This evolution happened on purpose. The provincial government, determined to transform B.C. into a global tourism destination, made its public lands available to resort developers starting in the mid-1990s. Private parties with clearly articulated visions and the means to finance them would be granted long-term leases to develop all-seasons resorts. The government would streamline this process by, according to the province’s Resort Strategy and Action Plan, identifying and eliminating “barriers to resort development, creation and expansion.” The strategy worked. Compare the province’s 10 largest ski areas today with its 10 largest in 1994:
The rise of B.C. skiing is a triumph of two sometimes contradictory forces – government and free enterprise – working in tandem for mutual benefit. The transformation of a onetime winter sports backwater into a Winter Olympic host dotted with icons such as Whistler and the Powder Highway is a remarkable case study in effective land management to the benefit of nature and people.
Alberta, right next door, has no such policy. Perhaps not coincidentally, ski area development has lagged. The two big Banff ski areas are nice. Remote Marmot Basin has modernized. But the majority of the province’s ski areas are rusty, rickety, undersized, or all three. Most are not in the mountains at all, but cluster instead around Alberta’s plains-bound cities. The predictable result: Albertans, according to the Edmonton Journal, spend “four times more money in B.C. than British Columbians do in Alberta.”
Alberta officials would like to change that. Per CBC News:
The Alberta government wants to entice private developers to propose building all-season resorts on Crown land, in an effort to boost tourism outside of summertime.
Tourism and Sport Minister Joseph Schow tabled a bill Thursday that, if passed, would create a regulator to manage applications for — and approval of — all-season resorts on public land. There are currently none on Crown land.
"There are incredible business owners and entrepreneurs in this province with some great ideas, but it is a difficult process," Schow said during an embargoed news conference Thursday morning. "We're going to make it easier."
Bill 35, the All-Season Resorts Act, would create a new regulator within the ministry, bringing environmental assessments, land use and Indigenous engagement requirements for potential resorts under one umbrella.
Schow pointed to B.C., where all-season resorts have been government-regulated for decades — and guzzling vacation dollars away from Albertans. There are 35 mountain resorts and community ski areas on B.C. public land, 13 of which host all-season resorts with rental accommodation, according to the B.C. government.
B.C.'s resorts are pumping billions of dollars into that province's economy, Schow said.
The Alberta government estimates passing Bill 35 would add $4 billion to the province's GDP within the first decade — although government officials did not explain how they calculated that figure.
Most of B.C.’s major ski areas - all but Mt. Washington Alpine - sit on crown land, underscoring the enormous impact of British Columbia’s proactive development policies:
I’ll leave the Canadians to fight each other, because my question today is this: where is America’s version of B.C.’s Resort Task Force (which created the Resort Strategy and Action Plan)? Our ski areas, large and small, are mostly on their own to navigate the tangle of local communities, environmental groups, and government agencies that can halt any sort of expansion or development for almost any reason. Approvals, almost as a rule, take longer than construction, while litigation saps time and capital that could be invested in infrastructure.