Being a former Parks Canada person there are a few areas I'd like to address: parks and the environment, and parks versus development. One thing we're finding very frustrating in Jasper National Park, which you're very familiar with, is the greater use of our old parks. Close to a million people are living in Calgary and Edmonton now, and they're using that as their playground.
We have the environmental people living in those communities or working in that environment who are opposing future development and future development is needed if we're going to continue to encourage people to go into the parks. That's something we need to really work at and balance, and I think you brought that up. It's very important, because our national parks are struggling within the organizations themselves. How do we deal with the environment? How do we get the public in? How do we serve both? Our national parks are very important to us.
Thank you for mentioning historic sites. I've been involved for quite a few years, and when Fort St. James National Historic Site was restored, it was very important to the communities to get that history in there. We can do so much.
I think somebody else mentioned—I'm not sure who it was—that when we're dealing with our parks we need to bring more land into use. Jasper National Park is at capacity. Banff National Park is at capacity and just outside the parks on the eastern slopes of the Rockies on any long weekend we probably get 100,000 to 150,000 people camping randomly. We need to look at that. In a lot of those areas we should be developing parts of our parks so we can take the pressure off the main parts.
On technologies, as a former city mayor I led one of the first cities to ban plastic bags. I thought we'd have a big fight over it, but it wasn't a big fight at all. We just said no more plastic bags are allowed in the city.