Do We Need To Regulate Outdoor Fun?

(Aired March 22, 2010)

I'm not in favour of overly-regulating the great outdoors in British Columbia. I agree in principle with MP Justin Trudeau that we shouldn't get too carried away with regulating skiiers and snowmobilers who enjoy the rush of being out in the back country on mountainsides and terrain that many of us would be afraid to set foot on. But we have to determine where the boundary is between foolishness and fun. We can't always determine where danger lies. Maybe that's part of the excitement.

On the weekend, two skiiers were killed near Valemount. It appears that the two guides involved had a lot of experience and had skiied the same area only a day or two before. But other deaths occurred in areas where the avalanche danger was extremely high, and you wonder why people would even take that chance. In some of those cases, young children were involved, and that's just insane.

The big question for me is not whether or not people should ski or snowmobile the back country. As long as they're not damaging the environment, I say let them go to it. But I am not in favour of you and I, the taxpayer, having to fund great relief and search efforts when these people go missing or get trapped. I'm obviously not in favour of letting them perish if they get hurt, but there has to be a line. If you want to take the risk, don't be coming to me if you get into trouble.

If we're going to pay the bill, then maybe some sort of regulation needs to be in place to govern when people can go out. But that brings up another problem-who patrols the regulations? Do we have to front that too?

There's no easy answer, but we have to come to grips with what is becoming an increasingly serious problem. In years like this, where the avalanche danger is inordinately high, can we allow the tragedies of the last month to continue? That's the question lawmakers have to deal with. The tragedies are becoming far too frequent.