The McInnis Scare

Abstract

AbstractThe previous chapter confirmed that the National Capital Commission (NCC), in continuing to adhere to the policy of negotiated purchase, was aware of the tremendous costs, economic and environmental, of this policy. This chapter describes the avalanche of expropriations in the 1980s, focusing on the McInnis Scare. This episode underscores how governance under the NCC means that Gatineau Park remains vulnerable to urbanization and development on private lands that are incompatible with conservation objectives. Even though the NCC has jurisdiction over the park territory and the power to zone and prevent developments, it refuses to do so. As with the Bourque Brothers and Sully Woods expropriations, the NCC was always reacting to events in the late 1980s and 1990s, such that the parkland acquisition program was ultimately derailed and remains incomplete to this day. This is an unfortunate policy failure given that Gatineau Park once appeared destined to be the prototype in nation-wide system of near-urban national parks.