| Chapter 3. Planning for Ecological Integrity |
| (3-17) We recommend that Parks Canada designate stand-alone work plans as "Operational Plans" under the umbrellas of the strategic and implementation plans to facilitate better linkage between strategic directions and on-the-ground activities to achieve ecological integrity objectives. This can be done by adding Operational Plans as appendices to the Implementation Plan, thus forcing the Implementation Plan to refer explicitly to them as well as to strategic Park Management Plans. |
These links between management plans, business plans and work plans or other detailed plans are already in place, though the terminology is not as recommended by the Panel. |
UNDERWAY. Management plans, business plans, and any subsequent detailed plans that may be necessary will be clearly linked and will be accountability tools for the maintenance or restoration of ecological integrity. |
| (3-18) We recommend that Parks Canada annually report about progress to maintaining and restoring ecological integrity in individual parks to provide a short-term feedback loop at the park level ... A formal, mandatory Annual Plan Implementation Report should be available to the public using appropriate public involvement mechanisms. (This report could be simply a compendium of the annual reports on individual Operational Plans.) The Annual Plan Implementation Report should be short and designed to facilitate easy "roll up" into a mandatory five-year report on the state of ecological integrity in the park (Recommendation 3-5) prior to the beginning of the next park management planning cycle. |
This requirement was initially built into the Banff Management Plan in 1998. |
UNDERWAY. The revised Parks Canada Guide to Management Planning requires that each park prepare an annual implementation report on the management plan. This can be linked to the requirement that already existed for an annual report on the accomplishments of the previous year's business plan. (This report on accomplishments helps monitor key priorities, and is used in performance appraisals of senior managers.) |
| (3-19) We recommend that the basic elements of a new National Strategic Plan should be similar to those proposed for revised Park Management Plans (see above), but scaled to the national level, and particularly include ... |
This recommendation includes reference to establishing indicators and targets for the broad national family of protected areas, including national parks. The response to this recommendation is part of longer range thinking that will be undertaken to consider national-level indicators and targets for the national park system. Some initial work has been done as part of earlier Parks Canada State of the Parks Reports. See also 3-4. |
Additional work in this area is dependent upon new funds and would be done in cooperation with other protected areas agencies, especially Environment Canada (see 3-4). |
