Hundreds of new homes announced for Jasper, offering residents ‘stability and relief’

Both the Alberta and Canadian governments made announcements in support of Jasper Thursday. Jeremy Thompson reports.

The Government of Canada announced a large funding package on Thursday for Jasper National Park and its townsite.

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A total of $160.1 million will go toward housing, wildfire response and recovery efforts in the park. About $30 million of that is for 320 interim housing units to be delivered next week.

“Uncertainty around housing is something that was and is causing a lot of stress for Jasper residents and business owners, and I hope that this announcement today brings some level of stability and relief back to the community,” said Alan Fehr, superintendent of Jasper National Park.

The wildfire displaced about 2,000 of the town’s residents and destroyed about a third of the townsite.

In October, Alberta promised $112 million for interim housing in the town, but those homes were put on hold indefinitely amid disputes over the type of housing wanted and the province’s requirement that town boundaries be expanded to accommodate more housing.

“We know that interim housing isn’t a permanent solution, but it’s critical to make sure that Jasperites can stay in their community as we rebuild and as the municipality plans for the long-term housing solutions and increased density,” Terry Duguid, new ministerial lead for Jasper, said.

“That may not be the opinion of other levels of government, but that is certainly a view that we share with you, because we have listened.”

Duguid said $9.4 million in funding from the Housing Accelerator Fund will speed up construction of 240 permanent homes over three years as part of Ottawa’s plan to build a total of 505 new permanent housing units in Jasper in the next decade.

“The biggest issue in Jasper has always been housing,” said Bill Given, Town of Jasper Chief Administrative Officer. “Obviously, that long-standing greatest challenge that Jasper faced was made even more acute by this past summer’s wildfire.

“The support of all governments, the federal government announcement today in particular, means that Jasperites will have places to call home now and into the future.”

Given said the accelerator funding will allow the town to focus on increasing housing supply through high-density homes, which are required to address the town’s housing deficit and support the local economy in the future.

The federal funding package also includes $19.6 million to reimburse Alberta for firefighting costs during the wildfire, as well as a new Employment Insurance (EI) pilot that will allow eligible Jasper residents claiming EI to receive a one-time credit of 300 employment hours.

Provincial funding

The Government of Alberta also announced additional funding for Jasper on Thursday.

The province said it will provide the town with $6.2 million for property tax relief and to replace revenue loss from the 2024 wildfire.

It also said property taxes would be forgiven for residents during the month the town was evacuated, and residents who remain displaced will not have to pay property taxes from July to December 2024.

“Jasper is one of Canada’s as well as Alberta’s tourism jewels, and they’re just good people. And we want the municipality to be successful, get back on its feet and recover,” Minister of Municipal Affairs Ric McIver said in an interview with CTV News Edmonton.

In November, the town estimated it would lose about $9 million in tax revenue over two years.

The current funding package includes $3.1 million for the town to replace lost 2024 taxes, with the rest to be used for residential and business property tax relief and education tax levy offsets.

Jasper also owes about $7 million under the provincial Disaster Recovery Program (DRP), which requires affected communities to share 10 per cent of natural disaster costs not covered by insurance.

McIver would not say if the province was considering helping the town pay its DRP portion, explaining communities are responsible for those costs because the federal government reduced natural disaster funding to provinces by 10 per cent.

“I guess we could choose to fund it at 100 per cent, but we also think there’s some logic to having some incentive to not have the same disasters occur over, and over and over again,” he added.

In addition to the tax relief funding, the province will give the town a one-time $2-million grant to contract temporary regional transit between Jasper and Hinton.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson