Devil in the details: Rebuilding Jasper

All three levels of government — federal, provincial, and municipal — are discussing how to streamline the rebuild of the Town of Jasper, Alta., which has a complex, 100-year-old leasing arrangement and stringent rules around development on Parks Canada land.

Because of numerous unresolved issues around rebuilding on Parks Canada land, Jasper’s reconstruction will likely be a “multi-year” project, says Rob de Pruis, national director of consumer and industry relations at Insurance Bureau of Canada.

de Pruis has spent 33 days in Jasper, working to help people in the town recover after a huge wildfire in burned down 358 buildings in July. He said the real story is how 880 buildings survived the fire, thanks to firefighters’ efforts.

Firefighters told dePruis the “wall of fire” descending on the town flashed 100 metres above the tops of trees. “There is no tool in any toolbox around the world that can battle a fire that’s 100 metres above the treetops,” de Pruis recalls the fire chief telling him.

Catastrophes Indices and Quantification (CatIQ) has estimated insured damage in Jasper will amount to more than $880 million.

de Pruis has been attending discussions among the three levels of government about some of the complications around rebuilding on Parks Canada land. At the moment, he says, insurers “don’t have any clear answers” on some of the thorny issues the governments are trying to resolve.

Land-lease

For example, complicating the rebuild is the fact that Parks Canada has a 100-year-old land leasing system that limits how the park land can be developed.

“Each property owner in Jasper, like those in other communities located within a national park, is a leaseholder with the Crown and must make annual payments tied to property values,” Edmonton Journal reports, citing a local lawyer, Jessica Reed.

“The Canada National Parks Act also stipulates the leases are usually for 42-year terms, although some are shorter, and renewing involves renegotiating terms of the leases,” the Journal adds. “Reed said this has already caused headaches for Jasper homeowners, as banks sometimes refuse to issue mortgages if the existing lease on a property is shorter than the prospective mortgage term.”

de Pruis tells CU the governments have discussed the potential for a ‘lease-transfer’ arrangement, intended to streamline the process to help property owners whose homes burned down in the July wildfire to rebuild quickly.

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“Prior to the wildfire, if you did have damage to your property, you were required to rebuild the exact same location, the exact same structure as to what was there, so you didn’t have an option of just simply walking away,” de Pruis says. “There were specific requirements.

“Because of this particular event, and because of the severity of the impact, officials are exploring, ‘What does that [rebuild] look like? Is it possible to do some type of a ‘lease-transfer’ type thing?’

“Because many people have been wanting to come to the area for a long, long time who wouldn’t have that opportunity but for this particular event.”

Would that mean people could now own or sublease Parks Canada land in Jasper?

Well, not so fast.

“There are local requirements where you have to have a ‘reason to reside,’” says de Pruis.

Resident requirements

Parks Canada’s ‘reason to reside’ requirement identifies seven eligibility criteria for being a resident of Jasper. They include: “someone whose primary employment is within the park; someone who operates a business in the park and whose presence is needed for the day-to-day operations of that business;” or retirees who were either employed or operated a business in the park.

These rules have residents who may rent or lease out their properties, or who commute into Jasper to work, exploring their options with their insurers.

“Jasper is a bit unique compared to Banff, for example,” says de Pruis. “In Jasper, you have to have a ‘reason to reside,’ meaning you have employment there, you have a business there — some type of connection to the community.

“So, you don’t see any foreign investors coming in and buying up property, and building properties, and never living there. You see that in other areas, in different parts across the country, but Jasper is a bit unique for that.

“So, because of that ‘reason to reside’ being a real thing [in Jasper], many people have been commuting, or may own some particular properties and have been renting them out for a variety of different reasons, or may own a number of properties and continue to reside there, but have other properties that they’re leasing out.

“Maybe they don’t want to do that anymore. Maybe there’s an opportunity for someone else to come in. So that’s the area we where we don’t have clear direction as to what that looks like and what those options are.”

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Governments are also discussing how to build back better, to reduce the risk of future wildfire damage, de Pruis says.

“What [the governments are] looking at is, is there a way to essentially build back better?” de Pruis says of the current discussions. “Will that be a requirement to build in a more fire-resistant way, or in a more energy-efficient way?’

Another area of discussion focusses on Parks Canada rules around mobile homes in the area.

“There was a whole bunch of mobile homes…in one particular area [of the town] that burnt down,” de Pruis says. “Normally, if a mobile home was removed or damaged, you would not be allowed to replace it with an existing mobile home.

“Well, apparently, there was an agreement decades ago, the [Jasper] mayor pointed out, that did allow a person — if their mobile home was damaged or destroyed outside of their control — [to be] able to replace it with something comparable. So that’s where a lot of the residents are talking with their insurance providers to understand what their options are.”

Photo Credit: A worker walks in a devastated neighbourhood in west Jasper, Alberta on Monday August 19, 2024. The Insurance Bureau of Canada says the wildfire that tore through Jasper is the second-most expensive one in Alberta’s history for insured losses. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Amber Bracken