A regular refrain in this province is that business and property owners are burdened with unnecessary red tape.
For a local example, look no further than those who own land in Gatineau Park.
Municipality of Pontiac property owners whose land is located in the park might be getting some welcome relief from the municipal council.
Council is looking at implementing two draft bylaws that would help the municipality deal with non-compliant property owners and allow landowners to renovate their homes.
Under the existing bylaws, landowners are very limited in what they can do in terms of construction and renovation on their homes.
Homeowners in the Gatineau Park exist in a strange state of pergatory when it comes to government regulations.
Although they live in a federally-regulated park, it’s not a national park. Nor is it a provincial park. But they also live in the Municipality of Pontiac, where they pay taxes.
All this confusing government jurisdiction talk is enough to make the most active citizen’s eyes glaze over.

But to the handful of people who live in the Gatineau Park, this is important stuff.
Imagine living in a home that has been handed down for generations dating back 100 years.
Imagine wanting to make your home more liveable only to be told that you’re not allowed to do any work on it because it sits inside an arbitrary piece of land.
It must be extremely frustrating for these homeowners who have had their hands tied behind their backs.
Even if their house were to burn down, if the costs associated with reconstruction amount to more than 50 per cent of the value of the home, it’s considered a new build and thus not allowed.
Your house burns down, you have the property to rebuild, and you’re told that you can’t do it because of some arbitrary set of rules meant to appease some cross-country skiers.
Critics of the draft bylaw highlighted the park’s ecological mandate.
On the municipality’s social media page, one critic referred to the bylaw as a “slap in the face” to that vocation.
Why the outrage?
It appears that these avid outdoors-people don’t want their illusion of unfettered access to nature to be tampered with in any way.
Heaven forbid that on their morning snow shoe they’re reminded that *horror of horrors* people actually live in the park.
Their appreciation of nature isn’t going to be shattered by a homeowner building a garage on the property they already own and have lived on for decades.
To top it all off, Municipality of Pontiac Director General Benedikt Kuhn said that the bylaw will only affect a handful of homeowners in the park.
Gatineau Park is 361 km sq. It’s massive.
If you can’t find a slice of nature in a park that’s just smaller than the size of the entire City of Gatineau, maybe you’re not so good at the nature thing and it’s time to get a new hobby.

Chris Lowrey