Hey United Conservative Party caucus, it's time to "take a sad song and make it better."

Albertans have been subjected to a bizarre war of pop song lyrics this week as the UCP caucus launched a Titanic-inspired campaign called "My Parks Will Go On."

The NDP oppositions meanwhile are humming along to Elton John's "Don't Go Breaking my Parks."

The issue is the provincial government's announcement earlier this year that it planned to "partner" with other organizations to keep some under-performing parks in the province going.  They're also reviewing the fates of some parks which could be "delisted" as parkland.

Significantly it's the UCP caucus, not the government, which has launched the campaign to correct what it calls "misinformation" being circulated that the province plans to sell and close parks.

In March the government announced plans to seek third-party partnerships for 164 parks, most of them small and, according to the government, remote.  It also planned to fully or partially close 20 sites.

The release said parks that didn't attract "partners" such as municipalities, First Nations or nonprofit groups, might be delisted and be deemed public land.

CPAWS, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, started a Defend Alberta Parks campaign in September.  The organization, through a Freedom of Information request, found a background document showing orphaned parks might eventually be sold to commercial interests.

The Parks ministry is denying that plan and also says even delisted parks will remain open for public recreation.

The whole dustup has struck a nerve, and not just with lefties, but also legions of wilderness lovers and camping families.  Defend Our Parks has distributed more than 15,000 lawn signs to further its cause.

You would think the great outdoors in a province replete with mountain majesty, awe inspiring badlands and pristine fishing lakes, would be a place to tread lightly, even for the unusually proactive UCP.

Just as it has with healthcare, the UCP has misjudged the cost of its hellbent determination to privatize and divest public services in Alberta.

The caucus campaign makes an awkward stab at justifying a step away from strictly public parks even as it tries to deny that there is a move afoot to close or sell them.

The "myparkswillgoon.ca" website includes a 2 question survey: "Do you believe that all parks and public lands need to be operated by the government in all circumstances?  Do you believe partnering with community groups to operate parks and public lands is a reasonable way for the government to save money?"

The whole money issue was brought into relief shortly after the launch of the website as the government announced a partnership with a nonprofit organization to groom cross country ski trails in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park and Kananaskis Country.

The sting in the tail is that the cost of that grooming will be passed on to members of the public wanting to use those previously free facilities with a $10 parking fee at the trail head.

Albertans can expect plenty more of those user fees as the government employs "partners" to manage parks.

The duelling parks campaigns also reveals another frailty of the UCP government.  It has an unusually inept communication strategy.

If the March parks policy was not intended to close or "privatize" some parks, it wasn't made very clear in press releases.  The NDP and Defend Alberta Parks folk are able to directly quote the government's own statements to shore up their position.

If the government is now fine tuning its plans because of the public backlash, it should just come clean and admit that.

In a sidebar to the whole skirmish, the UCP caucus failed to secure the domain name myparkswillgoon.com.  That was pretty quickly discovered and put to use by government critics who linked the URL to the Defend Alberta Parks website.

It's a rookie mistake to leave a domain name so close to your own unprotected, but it fits a pattern of UCP communications gaffes.  The many missteps by the government's oil and gas "war room" display the same ineptitude.

The whole parks debacle has been a bit of a sideshow to the big issues of the day.  But it's sad to think that Alberta's great natural heritage could slip away if the UCP continues to value its immediate ideological agenda over the legacy values of the province.

Photo Credit: Daily Hive