Discussion: Your (Canadian) Gov't at work - no more paper maps

As of January 2007, Natural Resources Canada will discontinue the printing of paper topographic maps and will close the Canada Map Office. Our government wants to get out of the business of producing maps.

Many Canadians place a priority on the paper map service the Government currently provides. Natural Resources Canada's digital mapping policy will effectively cut off access to the majority of Canadians. However, our politicians see this issue as a minor one. This policy will have an enormous impact on the Canadian public and our map users. The Minister of Natural Resources has a responsibility to listen to our point of view. This is not a minor policy amendment but a major change that has implications not just for map librarians but for the ordinary Canadian who is looking for a map for their cottage or who wants to go snowmobiling or hiking. Canada can be a vast and unforgiving country without a map in hand.

How you can help:

This is a political issue and we must get the message out to as many Canadians and organizations as soon as possible. An independent website has been set up to lobby and inform Canadians. Let your M.P. and the Minister of Natural Resources know what their constituents think of this decision.

Support Access to Maps for Canadians! Here is the webpage

Dumb question. I assume private firms will be able to buy the information from the government and/or private sources, and then print maps on demand. What's wrong with that?

This is insane. Do they have any idea what this is going to do to their tourism trade among outdoors types? A lot of US hikers, hunters, and fishermen will just say, "Damn, I can't get a map - I guess I'll go to Montana instead."

Dumb question: why is it insane, given previous dumb question that presumed that private firms will be able to provide printed maps for people?

I would argue that the private firms rising to the challenge won't satisfy the small communities throughout our country. Most of those communities, with access to our wilderness, are consumers of these maps (snowmobiling, hunting, fishing, etc.). Also, the electronic replacement option will not satisfy many as well without access to quality reproductions. Government services such as this are not by design to be profit making - but a service to taxpayers.

It doesn't appear that the government is getting out of the data collection business, just the printing business. The linked article claims it would cost $50 to print the color PDF file that one could buy instead of a printed map. I dispute this, since presumably companies will offer the maps cheaper once there is demand (since the government is not taking all the business any more). The only loss is the economies of scale of a large print run, but as we know from orienteering, there really aren't such returns unless really large print runs are used, and then the maps go out of date fast. Seems like a _better_ deal to me. I'm not Canadian, but I just don't get why this is a problem.

I have forwarded the (not so) dumb first question to the contact on the 'maps for canadians' website. Will post the response as soon as (if) I get it.

Response just received!

Hi Ross,

Currently a paper map costs about $12.00 but to print a 38" x 28" digital file you require a plotter - prices can vary from $8.00 per square foot up depending on the plotter and the paper used. If you are not in a large centre access to a plotter will be a problem.
You are looking at a miniumum of a 4 times price increase with a sacrifice in quality. A printout regardless of how good the plotter/printer is and the medium is not the same as a printed map or book. This is just really ahead of its time. Anything that I have printed on plotters does not last - if it exposed to sun and fluorescent lighting expect it to fade and very quickly.
Also the current printed maps have a legend printed on the verso of the map.
Hope this helps,

Heather McAdam

will discontinue the printing of paper topographic maps --- wants to get out of the business of producing maps

Another question: Does this only cover the actual printing/production of paper maps or will they also stop surveying and updating maps for digital use. That would be a total disaster since only the most 'lucrative' areas would be mapped and produced by commercial interests.

(I suppose I got the answer already in an earlier simultaneous post...)

The problem with the response is that it ignores the fact that presumably one firm (or a few) will invest in whatever printing technology is efficient and set itself up to deliver maps by mail to whoever wants them - the same way the stores that sell the government maps get them now. I think all three parts of the answer, the increased cost, decreased quality, and decreased access are red herrings unless there are places in Canada now without mail service but with map stores.

OK, enough from me since as I said, I'm not even Canadian.

I would be concerned that it may affect the availability of maps of obscure areas. Sure, I can go on line and order umpteen different maps of Grand Canyon or Banff - but what about those areas in the middle of nowhere - down the back roads in the Prairies - often the kind of places we seem to head to for orienteering......

Still not buying the argument that the market could somehow provide a more efficient approach to supplying these maps in paper form, if only due to the fact they would be 1-step further removed from the source of information. Make this a profit-driven venture, and the rural populations clients will likely bear the brunt of this.

An added thought (and yes, I'm being quite skeptical)- often how these work out in practice is the service is farmed out, the businesses realize their service is not used at the price and doesn't provide it, the public gets angry, and then the government steps in and subsidizes the business for far more cost than originally.

I'm not Canadian either, but I'm wondering how many people are adversely affected by this? Even if the map printing was intended to be a service to taxpayers, maybe the government thought that finite funds would be better allocated where there are more evident market failures?

These aren't maps that get updated frequently so I'm sure there are major economies of scale to be reaped by having someone produce them at high quality in large print runs. It seems likely that shifting map printing purely to the private sector would result in either competing vendors none of whom would be able to match the current government performance or an effective monopoly with all the attendant problems. I hope there are people out there making a living selling American hunters custom printouts of just the area they want instead of buying several maps just because their area of interest is smaller than or isn't contained entirely on one of the standard maps and offering other custom services but having the basic product available from the government strikes me as a good thing.

Drawing what's undoubtedly a problematic parallel in a host of ways, private provision of health care in the US may have significant strengths, notably in encouraging innovation, but these definitely don't include lower cost, greater efficiency or wider availability to consumers than public provision in Canada.

The NAOC maps will still be available on paper.

Is www.topozone.com not the likely business model?

This is interesting. Last year I actually paid for the reverse...CDN$99 for a DVD with scans of all the topo maps of southern Alberta and parts of BC, which I then loaded onto my handheld Windows XP computer's hard drive. The free viewer allows me to zoom in and out to different scale topos, and tiles the maps as needed. (Quite nice to use.) I thought this a big improvement over paper, and would hate to go back. No more trips to the map store for a topo!

If the maps are available digitally, viewable in decent map software, I'd be happy, and would view the map online, or print out what I need (including tiling across borders...sweet), depending on the situation.

(Yes, I've taken my handheld in the field (while designing our club Long champs courses), and it survived well. No, I wouldn't go out on a long trip without paper (yet :-), due to the obvious battery life issues, and the higher reliability (still, but the gap is closing) of paper than puter.)

jtorrance, that parallel is more skew than parallel.

I wonder if the vector pdf files will have up to date information. If topographic maps were updated on a more frequent basis, I would gladly take them in electronic format. It's particularly annoying going from one map sheet to the next and having contour intervals going from meters to feet and back. How long has Canada been metric!

I have a DVD of all maps in BC (Fugawi) and would gladly have purchased one for Yukon if it existed. I usually print on my inkjet at home, which is definitely low quality, but it does the job.

I presume the government will start supplying electronic maps on line. If so, I think that is a very good service. However, it will be unfortunate if they can't sell paper copies as well.

"jtorrance, that parallel is more skew than parallel." (I need to figure out at some point how others do excerpts from previous posts in italics.)

No doubt since vastly different products are involved. However, not yet having found whatever announcement of the change was made (surprising that the site Ross gave the link to didn't seem to link to it) to read what, if any, justification was given, it's hard not to suspect that the decision is driven by ideology holding that government should be small and the private sector always does everything better. That was the first example that came to mind that it ain't necessarily so.

If I read this all correctly, maps will be available online for free? Isn't that better? I would imagine that most recreational users have no need for super high-quality printing, and will find it cheaper and more convenient to download and print what they need... but I'm not Canadian either, so I'll shut up now.

There's a big difference between acquiring/supplying survey data, and operating a printing business.

I imagine there's a substantial stock of paper maps that have already been printed. Most of those are of very little interest, and the existing stock will probably last forever, although existing maps obviously can't get updated. Maps of popular areas that people actually want to get copies of, on the other hand, represent a business opportunity, and it will be worthwhile for private outfits to print them, perhaps in more convenient forms than the traditional maps.

On the other hand, you never know with government people. Rather than continuing to sell the existing maps, or handing them off to a private firm to do so, some bureaucrat may decide that they need to be shredded...

I would remember the fine university on that web-page, there's already an O map of it and future home to a great sprint race.
Americans are more than welcome to give Canadians their opinions, Canadians do it all the time for the US, it's up there with curling as a past-time.

Here's a quote from a NY Times essay (Tuesday) which was a fun read and tangentially on-topic. It concerned the rental of a car with GPS at KC airport. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/opinion/26tue4.h...

"If you spend a lot of time reading maps, you can get lost but have a very good idea where you are. You have a feel for the lay of the land because you’ve gone over it in your mind in advance. The G.P.S. is just the opposite. You can know exactly where you are without knowing where you are. The arrow on the screen is you — precise to within a few meters — but where that arrow is in the world at large can be hard to picture. "

Maybe GIS will make the existing maps obsolete. It appears that I can purchase the GIS data for my local 1:50,000 sheet (Salmon Arm) for a mere $320.95!!!! With the possibility of charging $320, why bother with these $12 paper sheets :-)!

Question, some of the topographic maps on-line (e.g., http://toporama.cits.rncan.gc.ca, new and old versions) appear to come from a semi-automatic GIS framework, rather than having been drafted by a cartographer. Does anyone know if the shift to electronic delivery is part of a shift toward using GIS data, rather than actual drafted maps?

Also, the "old" toporama version offers access to gif images of entire 1:50,000 sheets. For example, the Salmon Arm sheet is ...
http://toporama.cits.rncan.gc.ca/images/b50k/08/08...
While not as detailed as the 1:50,000 paper topos, this data may be more up-to-date and is more than sufficient for many of my uses (e.g., navigating down a river).

I imagine there's a substantial stock of paper maps that have already been printed.

Yeah, no kidding. I remember buying some envelopes that were made from surplus copies of remote USGS maps. Given how few ranches and whatnot were on those maps (or the bits that made up the envelopes anyway), and how unlikely they were for recreation (probably private), I wonder if more than two copies were sold of those sheets.

(I need to figure out at some point how others do excerpts from previous posts in italics.)

less-than-sign letter-i greather-than-sign text to be italicized less-than-sign forward-slash letter-i greather-than-sign

Oops, I meant less-than-sign letter-a href="http://myluridads.com" greather-than-sign text to be italicized less-than-sign forward-slash letter-a greather-than-sign

The demise of quality cartography....Haven't we discussed this topic so many times before, perhaps with different specifics....?

And in a larger sense, hasn't our society proved, time and again, incapable of preventing such changes that increase efficiency and reduce costs?

Targets and Walmarts sweep into town, and the established retail infrastructure shuts down. Handwritten letters yield to emails. Carefully photographed and framed pictures are replaced by waves of digital CDs.

And beautiful, full-size offset maps are replaced by flickering images on a screen....or smudged scraps of a map spit out of a $79 printer.

If someone can figure out how to halt this "progress," I'm there! I haven't added a decent map to my collection in 5 years!

And my favorite offset shop for printing orienteering maps, Oxbow Press, closed its doors this past summer.

(Actually what the waves of digital CDs are replacing are waves of envelopes full of snapshots where you couldn't even tell whether the picture had your thumb in the field of view until you got the whole roll developed. Carefully composed pictures worth framing still exist with digital photography, and I've got at least one hanging up on the wall here.)

Anyone who's used both "real" USGS maps and maps from Topozone.com or it's competitors in hostile conditions knows that the private market isn't even close to providing a replacement to the high-volume printing of government maps.

I'm very much a Libertarian, but there are some things that simply can't be done well when profit is the driver.

I've seen both paper topo maps and (orienteering) maps printed on a waterproof substance like Teslin deteriorate somewhat in bad conditions. The former may still be a bit better, but not much. The best are some private offset-printed topo maps made locally, which are the most durable (and, incidentally, useful) that I've used.

On the subject of Teslin (actually, Rosbuskin) -- I can't resist re-directing attention to the definitive test of the longevity and fortitude this technology can afford maps.

These pictures here detail the abuse a 5 year-old map was subjected to with no discernable degradation due to being pummeled, stomped on, and driven over several times.

Doesn't have much to do with the core of this thread, though...

Nice before photos and pummelling photos; where are the after photos? :-)

I think that a discussion of "paper" would actually be useful, to see where the state of the art is now. We do find that Teslin works well, as long as our laser printer is set up appropriately. I wonder what other materials others have found.

j-man,

Just a clear proof what good quality printing and paper can do to a map :)

Here's an after -- apologies for bad lighting.

On a more serious note, I think you guys are right -- a discussion of "paper" actually is worthwhile. It really does make a difference, especially as more people are using non-offset stuff (though it matters there, too.)

smudged scraps of a map spit out of a $79 printer

My $79 printer does a very good job, thank you Clark. Not offset but close. It's not the printer, it's how you use it.

With laser printers, generally the more expensive, the better the output, with the "acceptable" line drawn well above $10k.

"The demise of quality cartography..."

Clark, I agree with your sentiment, as it relates to orienteering, and I think this is a point worth repeating. The printed maps are still one of the important ways we show orienteering to the world, and the map graphics that we (US/NA) are producing have deteriorated, along with, incredibly, the print quality.

This is of course a subjective area, but I don't think it takes complexity or even much more time to make a good looking layout. Simply copying a good style can be fine. Unfortunately, this is not being done.

If you can stand some historic context-
A Swiss/Norwegian, Jorg Luchsinger, pioneered the Norwegian style layout, which to my eye still sets the world standard. Jorg is now more of a printer than a draftsman, perhaps due to OCAD making obsolete his great pen-and-ink line work.

His layout style was a starkly simple, but finely crafted format. His point was that the body of an O map already has strong visual interest, and the layout should not distract the viewer, just frame and support the subject.

Pat Dunlavey another "retired"(?) draftsman, also deserves mention for a similar level of graphic achievement in the US.

Clark, have you been to a DVOA meet lately? Our map layouts aren't breaking new ground, but I think we are at least holding on respectability. (I am not one of the people doing the work) We also do more offset printing than anyone, which should not be a cause and effect relationship, but the correlation is uncannily strong.

Maybe this talk is just tilting at windmills, but I don't want to go down without some ranting pleas.

A Swiss/Norwegian, Jorg Luchsinger, pioneered the Norwegian style layout, which to my eye still sets the world standard...

Eric, would that be LUCHS kart & trykk, the firm that takes the printing credit on the Norwegian WOC '97 maps? My copy is annotated with the winning runs of Hanne Staff and Petter Thoresen. Fabulous maps...and a joy forever. As I recall, these full-size 16"x20" maps were distributed as an insert with an orienteering magazine at the time....when was the last time a large O map fell out of an O magazine upon arrival?

I regret I haven't been to a DVOA meet recently...as much as I love French Creek. But I will grant you that it was the quality of those Delaware Water Gap maps which drew me back when you presented "Return to Water Gap" a couple of years ago. Keep up the good work!

Clark, good eyes! That is indeed Jorg.

Canada shreds plan to scrap paper maps ...

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2006/10/12/m...

Phew. Those of us in the boonies with no choice but dial-up Internet would really miss paper maps.