Image: Jason Walters / Chilliwack resident Jason Walters stands next to a rec site in the Chilliwack River Valley. Walters says a B.C. government employee has cancelled the RFP he won to manage Chilliwack River Valley campsites.

By Mike Vanden Bosch

Campsite management

Chilliwack resident says B.C. govt. cancelled the RFP he won to manage Chilliwack River Valley recreation sites

Feb 5, 2025 | 9:28 AM

CHILLIWACK — Recent changes to the campsite system in the Chilliwack River Valley and the hosts who manage them aren’t sitting well with Chilliwack resident Jason Walters.

Walters, who managed the Tamihi campsite east of the Vedder Bridge for three years and other rec sites for an additional four years, says he followed all the necessary protocol when he applied to operate Chilliwack River Valley East and West recreation sites ahead of the 2025 camping season for the B.C. government. He says he scored the highest in a request for proposal among all applicants, but had his RFP contract cancelled by a district recreation officer, Tom Blackbird, who works for the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources Operations on behalf of the B.C. government, without any explanation.

“I was the only one that met the mandatory requirements to be scored on the RFP,” Walters said. “I was scored on both, won both but Tom cancelled the RFP.”

Walters provided a copy of the RFP proposal evaluation form to Fraser Valley Today in which his company, 360 Recreation Ventures Ltd., scored 207.5 out of 265 on a number of criteria like deliverables, life-cycle costs, clarity of proposal, transition activities, service delivery, site maintenance, financial management, operating plan details and safety certification. Under the management criteria section of the RFP proposal evaluation form, it shows Walters had the necessary qualifications for relevant experience, maintenance capabilities, references, organizational structure and key personnel, staff management and training, site host screening and risk management. He received 89 points out of 100 in the management score.

Instead of the same recreation system that Chilliwack-area campers could expect, each of the recreation sites in the Chilliwack River Valley has now been divided up into its own partner agreement, Walters says. For example, people who want to camp at Thurston Meadows or Riverside need to go through that specific host and their own customized reservation system.

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Walters was supposed to take over the Chilliwack River Valley network of recreation sites from Wayne Furness, a versatile jack-of-all-trades who was involved in cleaning up some homeless camps off Chilliwack Lake Road in early 2024. Instead, the B.C. government is forming partner agreements with each specific campsite in the Chilliwack River Valley.

“I feel sorry for the campers, I think they’re being treated unfairly,” Walters said. “The general public was aware of what the regular reservation system was. The campsite reservation website was going to remain the same. All the hosts doing their work was going to stay the same.”

Walters says people who want to camp in the Chilliwack River Valley don’t want difficulty when they go to reserve or when they actually take their vacation and camp. In years past, people knew what to expect when they wanted to book. Now, they don’t.

“It’s the part of not knowing to what to expect,” Walters told Fraser Valley Today during a sit-down chat at a Chilliwack diner. “When people want to camp, they don’t want drama. They want it to be easy. A lot of that camping experiences comes back to the host. It’s hard to find hosts that are good at their job. When you’ve had people like me or my mom that care about the job, it’s hard to replace that.”

As part of the partner agreement change, Walters believes that some campground hosts are being hired without the necessary qualifications to run a campsite. On top of that, he suggests there’s been little communication between the local provincial rep and the new campsite hosts. In other words, they’re on their own.

“Some of the hosts that are being hired don’t meet the minimum qualifications to host a camp ground,” he said. “I spoke with some hosts and was told there has been no communication with Tom and no contract in place.”