By Curtis Galbraith

Provincial Politics

No surprises in mandate letter says Loewen

Jul 27, 2023 | 5:41 PM

Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen says there were no surprises in his mandate letter from Premier Danielle Smith.

“More or less what I was expecting. There were some things on there that I thought we’d done really good work on already that were on there again. We’ve got to always be improving and doing better. Overall, kind of what I expected.”

One of the first things the Central-Peace Notley MLA has been tasked with is working with cabinet colleagues to come up with an incentive program for the forestry industry similar to the Agri-Processing Tax Credit. Loewen says the government wants more value-added products produced in Alberta.

“We want those jobs created here and if we can do it by sending less of our raw product away to be worked on, then I think that’ll be a good thing for the province and for our economy.”

The letter also asks Loewen to work on coming up with a plan to add 900 campsites across Alberta over the next 10 years.

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Loewen says this could include expanding existing campgrounds and building new ones.

“We’ve already been working on expanding some of the campgrounds (and) updating some of the campgrounds.”

“Some of the campgrounds are fairly old and weren’t really built for the larger recreational vehicles that people are using nowadays, so we’ve been trying to improve some of them.”

Loewen says Alberta currently has 250 campgrounds and 14,000 sites.

Working on a conservation and recreation strategy for Crown Land is also included in the letter.

“We do have a lot of stakeholders already out there that are working good with government in developing campgrounds and maintaining campgrounds and campsites.”

“When we look at the wide expanse we have across Alberta, there’s more opportunity there. We want to increase tourism. We want to make sure that people have a place to recreate, both Albertans and people who visit our province.”

Loewen says some stakeholders may have decided on areas they want to develop more, and the government will look at those to see if it can help.