New Parks Canada Minister Told To Create More Parks

By Jennifer Bain - January 31st, 2022

In Ivvavik National Park, two of Parks Canada's famous red chairs await visitors/Jennifer Bain

The new federal minister responsible for Parks Canada has been told to create new national parks, national urban parks and national marine conservation areas. Steven Guilbeault got his marching orders in a Dec. 16 mandate letter from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

In an ambitious five-year plan, Trudeau wants 10 new national parks and 10 new national marine conservation areas, and he wants Parks Canada to work with Indigenous communities on co-management agreements for all of them.

Steven Guilbeault is the new minister responsible for Parks Canada.

By 2030, Trudeau also wants to see 15 new national urban parks, with at least one in each of the 10 provinces and each of the three territories. This is “to ensure all Canadians have access to green space,” wrote Trudeau. Right now, Canada has just one — Rouge National Urban Park — and it’s in the Greater Toronto Area.

“You will also invest in existing national parks, with more Canadians than ever before visiting these sites,” Trudeau wrote in the 10-page mandate letter.

Guilbeault — who is also minister of environment and climate change — was told to help reduce emissions, create clean jobs and address existing climate-related challenges.

“The science is clear. Canadians have been clear. We must not only continue taking real climate action, we must also move faster and go further,” Trudeau wrote. “As Canadians are increasingly experiencing across the country, climate change is an existential threat. Building a cleaner, greener future will require a sustained and collaborative effort from all of us.”

Guilbeaut, first elected as the Member of Parliament for Laurier—Sainte Marie in 2019, was previously minister of Canadian heritage.

According to his biography, Guilbeault is an activist who rides his bike all year long. He climbed a tree when he was just five to protect it from real estate developers who were about to cut down the woods behind his home in La Tuque, Quebec. When he was 30, he climbed Toronto’s CN Tower to call for Canada to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and reduce greenhouse gases. In 1993, he co-founded Équiterre, Quebec’s largest environmental organization. He has worked for Greenpeace and companies dedicated to developing clean technologies.

Guilbeault was given until March to detail how Canada will meet its legislated 2030 climate goals.

Trudeau shook up his cabinet after the Liberal Party won the October 2021 federal election. The next federal election must be on or before Oct. 20, 2025.

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