Avalanche Canada Warns Alberta Funding Delay Could Force Program Cuts

Avalanche Canada is still without funding from the Government of Alberta and time is running out before real program cuts will have to start being made. As early as September 1st, programs such as youth education may start to get the axe if the organization doesn’t get funding certainty from the province.

Avalanche Canada is a not-for-profit, non-government organization, which issues daily avalanche forecasts. Their three year funding agreement came to an end in March and they haven’t heard from the province about if they will get their requested increased budget of $300 000 per year, their previous budget of $250 000 per year, a decrease from that or no funding at all.

Gilles Valade, executive director of Avalanche Canada, said even the increased $300,000 request would not restore Alberta’s contribution to the same five per cent of the organization’s budget that $250,000 represented when that funding level was introduced in 2015. He said the requested amount is also about one-third of what Alberta once contributed to Avalanche Canada’s budget.

By comparison, British Columbia is in the fifth year of a 10-year, $10-million funding agreement with Avalanche Canada. Valade said there is no contingency funding available to replace Alberta’s contribution, meaning programs would have to be cut if provincial funding does not come through.

Youth education programs would be the first thing to get cut not because they are least important, but simply because they are the next thing on the calendar. Hiring for community outreach positions would normally start now in order to get people into schools and community organizations in September and October before the snow falls and Avalanche season begins.

“It took 20 years to get where we are now in terms of people's awareness and education understanding of winter backcountry recreation and if we lose momentum it'd be a disaster,” said Gilles Valade CEO of Avalanche Canada “We were starting to make quite a bit of headway with our youth education in Alberta so we might have to pull back on them which is unfortunate.”

These programs are different from Avalanche Skills Training programs (AST), which will continue to be offered using the Avalanche Canada curriculum, which are for people looking to learn skills to go into the back country. These are offered by various providers and paid for by the participants. The programs that would be cut are vital outreach to people with no training and limited knowledge which can provide a vital link for them to learn more and keep themselves safe.

"Having Avalanche Canada have the ability to afford to do outreach like that, to capture the unaware people, they're just totally unaware and they're super keen to get out there and they find themselves in a mountain environment, they have no idea. That first little push towards getting educated, I think, has made a huge difference over the years with the increase of mountain users,” said Jeff Bullock a certified mountain guide with Alpine Air Adventures and former outreach educator with Avalanche Canada. 

Bullock pointed to the example of the 15 year old boy who died at Nakiska in an Avalanche last year and how avalanches don’t only affect people in the back country. Beginning to understand what causes avalanches and having a some knowledge can do a lot to keep people safe.

"The outreach work that Avalanche Canada also does with schools is really important,” Bullock said. “That little tidbit of information, if you can get it across to the kids that are immersed in ski culture and mountain culture coming out of a city like Calgary, what a wind slab looks like, feels like.”

This funding cut comes as there are more people in the backcountry than ever and the province plans to expand winter tourism with the all-season resorts act, which includes proposed large developments in Kananaksis at Nakiska and Fortress Mountains.

“The decisions that are being made are not necessarily in line with what they're planning,” said Valade. “You put more people in the backcountry it just means there's more people at risk of being caught especially if they're not informed.”

Already, the volume has increased, with Bullock estimating a 10% annual increase in people taking the AST course and a noticeable spike after COVID. In 2021 a record, at the time, 13 119 people took the AST 1 course, according to Avalanche Canada’s statistics.

"There's a lot of people going into really steep terrain nowadays who seem to be fairly complacent, or just a little bit inexperienced, which is fine, we all have our levels, we're on the curve of learning. But there's just more volume, there's more people approaching avalanche terrain than ever in Canada,” said Bullock.

Avalanche Canada’s bulletins are a very important resource for guides like Bullock in both his guiding work and the AST training programs he runs. 

“Myself as a guide, even with years of experience, I refer back to the Avalanche Canada public bulletin daily,” said Bullock “So for me as a guide it's super helpful, and it's a huge component to public safety and what we teach in these courses. It'll really be a gap in how we present things to the public, for people using the mountains, in Kananaskis particularly. So you take that away, you take those outreach programs away, you take the funding for a public avalanche bulletin away, there's going to be more accidents. It's just logical to understand that that's going to happen. Which means fatalities. Some people are going to die.”

Avalanche Skills Training courses will continue to be offered by local providers like Alpine Air Adventures even in the case of a funding cut. The providers are independent of Avalanche Canada,  but use and rely on their curriculum and daily bulletins.

Todd Loewen Minister of Forestry and Parks, who administers funding to Avalanche Canada, and his representatives did not respond to requests for comment.