Access to public land is changing. So is who gets to make the rules

Most Canadians assume that public land belongs to the public.

That principle seems self-evident. Crown land is held by governments on behalf of citizens. Whether it is a provincial park, a fishing lake, a forest road or a remote wilderness area, Canadians reasonably expect that public land will remain accessible to the public.

But what if that principle is under attack?

Across Canada, governments are making decisions that are gradually restricting access to public lands. Sometimes the justification is conservation. Sometimes it is Indigenous reconciliation. Sometimes it is a new governance arrangement or a protected area initiative. Each case may be different, but together they point to a troubling trend.

Canada is drifting away from the principle that Crown lands belong equally to all Canadians.

That matters because Crown land is not some obscure legal category. It encompasses most of Canada’s land mass and includes forests, parks, watersheds and countless places where Canadians hunt, fish, hike, camp and connect with the natural world.

This issue is not really about outdoor recreation, however. It is about something much bigger. It is about who controls public resources, who gets access to them and whether governments remain accountable to the citizens they serve.

For generations, Canadians have enjoyed something rare in the modern world. We inherited vast public lands and a tradition that allowed ordinary citizens to access them. Families camped on them. Anglers fished their rivers. Hunters harvested wildlife under carefully managed conservation systems. Public lands were managed for the benefit of the public.

That principle is now under pressure.

In Manitoba, concerns have emerged over proposals affecting the Seal River watershed, an area roughly the size of Nova Scotia. While details continue to evolve, proposals under discussion could significantly alter how parts of the region are governed and who ultimately makes decisions about access and land use. Critics argue that local residents, hunters, anglers and tourism operators were brought into the discussion far too late, despite the scale of the changes being contemplated.

British Columbia has seen similar tensions. At Joffre Lakes Provincial Park, access restrictions reserved portions of the season for Indigenous use only, prompting debate over whether public lands should ever be closed to some Canadians based on identity rather than managed through broader public access systems.

The specifics differ, but the underlying concern is the same: decisions affecting public lands are increasingly being made through processes that many citizens neither understand nor meaningfully participate in.

At the heart of the debate is a simple question: how should public resources be governed?

Any discussion of Crown land inevitably intersects with Indigenous rights and reconciliation. The question is not whether Indigenous rights should be respected. They should. The question is whether governments can uphold those rights while maintaining transparent, accountable and democratic governance of public lands.

What makes these cases troubling is the principle they reveal. Crown lands are supposed to belong equally to all Canadians. Yet governments are increasingly granting some groups access and authority that other citizens do not have, while creating governance structures that weaken democratic accountability.

That accountability matters because some recent initiatives have shifted authority away from elected governments and toward boards and management structures that operate further from public scrutiny. Regardless of who occupies those seats, citizens should retain the ability to understand how decisions are made and to hold decision-makers accountable through democratic institutions.

Conservation matters. Responsible stewardship matters. Indigenous rights matter.

But so does public access.

In fact, some of the strongest advocates for conservation are the very people now finding themselves excluded.

Hunters and anglers contribute millions of dollars annually through licence fees, habitat restoration projects, wildlife monitoring programs and volunteer efforts. When wildlife populations decline, they are often among the first groups demanding action.

The point is not that hunters and anglers deserve special treatment. The point is that they are citizens participating in the stewardship of public resources. Excluding them does not strengthen the principle that public lands belong to everyone. It weakens it.

That approach misunderstands one of the central lessons of conservation. People protect what they value. And they value what they can experience.

The more disconnected Canadians become from public lands, the less likely they are to support the long-term stewardship those lands require.

There is also a broader question of trust.

Recent polling has shown declining confidence in many public institutions. Canadians increasingly feel decisions are being made behind closed doors by people they never elected and cannot influence.

When major decisions affecting public lands emerge after years of discussions that few citizens knew were taking place, trust inevitably suffers. Citizens are far more likely to accept difficult decisions when they understand how they were reached and have had a meaningful opportunity to participate in the process.

At its core, this debate comes down to a simple principle: public lands belong to all Canadians.

That does not mean every acre should be open to every activity. Responsible management will always require balancing competing interests. But the starting point should be that public resources are held in trust for the public and managed through transparent, accountable and democratic processes.

Once governments begin treating public access as a privilege rather than a principle, we enter very different territory. Public lands cease to be truly public when access depends on political decisions that favour some citizens over others.

Canadians should think carefully before accepting that trade.

Rights and traditions rarely disappear all at once. More often, they erode gradually, one policy, one exemption and one decision at a time.

Public lands belong to all Canadians. If we stop defending that principle, we should not be surprised if one day we discover it no longer exists.

David Leis is the President and CEO of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and host of the Leaders on the Frontier podcast. A seasoned commentator on Canadian public policy, he focuses on restoring accountability, economic common sense, and civic health to the country’s national, provincial and municipal institutions.