Go camping at your provincial or federal parks, they’re beautiful, inexpensive, and they have their own websites
And Manitoba’s, where I live, are also run by them.
People really need to wake up to how this works. This isn’t an unfortunate exception. It’s the natural and desired result of free markets and free trade pushers (neoliberalism more general.) You need something done for the government (or private enterprise,) tender some offers, choose the lowest, regardless of ownership or location. For the intents and purposes of using market forces to distribute goods and services - that’s a perfect outcome. We gotta make more and more people understand this isn’t some strange outcome but the system working as intended by its designers. And if they want different outcomes, the system design has to change.
Quebec’s park management agency, the Société des établissements de plein air du Québec, operates its own system
Is Québec really the only government in Canada that made the right choice? Maybe they should offer to run things for Parks Canada too, if the federal government has fallen so far into neoliberal neglect that it’s incapable of doing it on their own.
I assumed it’s because the crown corp running the park system was a huge cost to the government, which would come under fire in other provinces. But from Sépaq’s 2025 financial statment (PDF, in french) their income was $261.8 million and their expenses were $261.3 million giving them a profit of $459,000 which they say they reinvest into parks. Even small government advocates would have a hard time arguing this crown corp should be privatized.
Hipcamp is pretty good for private and off the grid camping too. I’ve been using it more and finding great spots.
This is why for the most part, post-2020, I’ve stopped going to government campgrounds and usd forestry service sites instead.
It’s been really annoying that this closes off large chunks of backcountry camping as well; however, there’s still lots of backcountry where you pay to park your vehicle, not per-person in the backcountry, so the solution there is: park outside the park and walk/bicycle in to the trailhead.
