Riley Brandt

Retired wardens Kathy Calvert and Dale Portman say having fewer wardens opens the door to more illegal activity in parks

National parks are more vulnerable to abuse now that the federal government has cut more than three-quarters of its park wardens, ex-wardens say.

As well, the downsizing — from more than 400 wardens to about 60 in Canada’s 42 national parks — has created uncertainty and distrust in the service as it gears up to celebrate its 100th year.

“No two ways about it, I think that the parks are going to be exploited,” says Dale Portman, president of the Park Warden Service Alumni Society of Alberta. Portman, a warden of almost three decades who now lives in Cochrane, believes the new warden force will be too small to monitor ATVs, poaching and helicopter activity in remote wilderness areas. “It’s kind of like the Calgary city police losing three-quarters of their law enforcement capability but still saying that they’ll still be able to deal with the crime.”

Kathy Calvert, another retired warden who spent 25 years in the service, believes parks will have more illegal fishing, hunting and perhaps even logging. “There’s not going to be anybody there to even know when it’s happening,” says Calvert, who’s married to Portman. “The absence will be palpable.”

About 300 former wardens have been demoted, rebranded as resource management and public safety personnel. They’re responsible for jobs like trail maintenance, ecological studies and fire management.

“I know it’s a hard decision and it’s difficult and it’s been a challenge for many of our staff, but the decision’s been made,” says Bill Fisher, Parks Canada director general for Western and Northern Canada. “We’re placing these dedicated resources in [certain] locations to ensure that our parks remain safe for visitors, and are protected well against people that are interested in damaging the resources.”

Last year, the government approved the creation of an elite 100-member warden force, and Parks Canada hopes to have 85 wardens in place later this year. Of those, about 20 will be responsible for the seven mountain parks in Western Canada, including Banff National Park. (Fisher says “operational reasons” keep him from disclosing exactly how many wardens will be in each park.) The other 65 will be spread over Canada’s remaining 35 parks, with some parks sharing wardens.

The new arrangement signals the end of what retired warden Scott Ward calls “the generalist warden” who took care of resource management, public safety and backcountry patrols. “You had the enforcement authority and the training so you could deal with things as they arose,” recalls Ward, a 35-year warden veteran who spent most of his career in Banff. Now, he says, “there’s really nobody patrolling the backcountry.”

Former wardens also say the changes have sunk morale inside the service. “At one time, you had an outfit of the wardens that probably had arguably one of the highest morales of anybody in the federal civil service,” says Ward. “They basically took that and totally destroyed it.”

Working wardens won’t publicly speak about the changes, afraid their employment would be at risk. “It seems kind of fascist, actually, around there,” says Calvert. “People don’t know if they can trust each other anymore.”

Daniel Kinsella of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the wardens’ union, says employees don’t know what to expect in the future. “There’s a lot of uncertainty,” he says.

The past decade has been tumultuous for Canada’s wardens. After a long and bitter legal fight between Parks Canada and the wardens’ union, a federal court ruled in 2007 that wardens had to start carrying handguns for safety’s sake. Parks Canada responded by removing wardens’ law enforcement authority, and last year, they were further stripped of their iconic Stetson-and-khaki uniforms.

Under the new arrangement, wardens will now wear the Stetsons, carry handguns and deal exclusively with law enforcement. “This is an evolving and changing role,” says Fisher, adding that Parks Canada only plans to fill 85 of the 100 positions this year “to get a sense of what our demand is” with the new force. “We wanted to obviously have some flexibility to address any areas where there might be some shortfalls for the upcoming years,” he says. “I’m quite confident that we will have the resources in the right locations.”

Warden vets, however, aren’t convinced by Parks Canada’s assurances. When Ward worked at Banff, wardens would patrol the northern boundary to ensure poachers didn’t hunt bighorn sheep. “Without a really close look at that all the time like we used to have, you wonder if 20 years down the road there may not be any sheep left up there.”

Calvert says Parks Canada is showing “little regard” for the backcountry, focusing instead on busy recreational areas. “We’re getting this feeling that they just want a Coney Island.”