Algonquin Provincial Park - power access

shum02 wrote:

JaxDad wrote:

almcc wrote:
.... it's disappointing that Ontario provincial parks could do much better, they are firmly back in the 1960's. I remember being in Pinery at that time with my parents, some things have improved but the parks haven't moved with the times and they aren't capitalizing on the change to camping habits, equipment and demographics.

Back in 1996 there was an important but quiet change in regards to Ontario Provincial Parks, this during Mike Harris' No Sense Revolution.

They were required to economically stand on their own.

The problem was, they were staffed by a bloated bureaucracy of civil servants who all belonged to a very powerful union. Wages or staffing couldn't be cut.

The only choice was to dramatically increase fees and cut spending.

That's what they did.

Must have worked because while U.S. State parks where shutting down campgrounds during the "economic downturn" the largest park system in North America kept all it's campgrounds open.

I love the Parks, will not even consider private parks while RV camping in Ontario.

That's a bit of an "apples and oranges" comparison. If you had camped in the US during the downturn period you would have noticed that they were hit much harder than we were in Ontario, partially because we took the hit during better times because of NAFTA which stripped out a lot of our manufacturing base so the downturn didn't hit us as bad (not as many manufacturing jobs to lose).

In the US the job (and tax) loss was much greater and lots of folks just stopped camping (some had their RV's repossessed). Some states like Arizona shut down some of their state parks for the summer months (like we do over the winter) when occupancy is low due to the high heat, things are now back. I call that good fiscal management.