In the United States, the Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes a dedicated Outdoor Recreation Satellite Account every year. It has helped unlock hundreds of millions in federal investment for public lands and recreation infrastructure. Canada needs the same tool.
The Policy Details
If you ski, snowboard, trail run, mountain bike, paddle, climb, or spend any time in the wild places that make Canada extraordinary these policy proposals are for you. Protect Our Winters Canada is asking the federal government to take three bold steps that will protect the landscapes we love, strengthen the communities built around outdoor recreation, and give Canada a fighting chance against the climate crisis that threatens all of it.
Here is what we are asking for, why it matters, and what is at stake if we do not act.
1. THE CHALLENGE
Every time you buy a lift ticket, book a canoe trip, pick up new hiking boots, or head to a local outdoor shop, you are part of one of Canada’s most powerful economic engines and no one in Ottawa is tracking it. A 2024 University of Waterloo study found that outdoor recreation generates $102 billion in annual economic activity and supports 1 million jobs across the country. That makes it larger than pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and forestry.
Yet Canada has no official way to measure this sector. It does not show up as its own line in federal economic data, which means it rarely shows up as a priority in federal budgets or policy discussions.
2. WHY IT MATTERS FOR OUR COMMUNITY
When policymakers cannot see the economic scale of outdoor recreation, they cannot make the case for protecting the public lands, clean water, healthy forests, and reliable snowpack that the industry depends on. Communities in mountain towns, northern watersheds, and rural regions, many of them Indigenous, rely on this economy as their primary livelihood. Invisibility in data means vulnerability in policy.
In the United States, the Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes a dedicated Outdoor Recreation Satellite Account every year. It has helped unlock hundreds of millions in federal investment for public lands and recreation infrastructure. Canada needs the same tool.
3. WHAT WE ARE ASKING FOR
In February 2021, the Quebec municipality of Minganie and Innu Council of Ekuanitshit gave legal personhood to Muteshekau-shipu (the Magpie River), a precedent setting case in Canada and globally! By giving nature the rights to maintain its natural biodiversity, to perform essential functions within its ecosystem and legal standing in courts, nature - through a legal guardian - can seek court order to stop actions that cause harm such as pollution or extraction. While it might sound new (or nuts), this just puts nature on the same footing as oil and gas corporations who already have legal personhood! Rights of Nature are often led or inspired by Indigenous legal traditions which hold land as sacred, in reciprocal relation or interconnected to human rights.