How we're paid.

The short version

We earn a commission on some of the retailer links on this site, and nothing on others. Every link says which. No brand or retailer pays for a listing, a position, or a favourable write-up — that is not a service we sell.

Why a certification body runs a gear site at all

NBWSR sets the equipment standard students are assessed against. Students then go and search for gear, and what they find is content farms with no standard behind them. We would rather answer that question ourselves, in public, with the reasoning attached.

That creates an obvious conflict: an organization that recommends gear and earns on gear has an incentive to recommend more gear. The rules below exist to hold that incentive away from the standard. They are commitments, not aspirations, and several of them are enforced in the software rather than by policy.

The rules

1. Nothing here is required to certify

NBWSR does not require any particular brand. No purchase on this site is a condition of certification, and the controlling document for any field session is the gear addendum sent to registered students — not this site.

2. Selection follows a published standard

Every product is tied to a numbered clause in the Kit Specification, with a written rationale explaining how it satisfies that clause. If a product cannot be tied to a clause, it is not listed. The rationale is published on the product page so you can disagree with it.

3. Nobody buys placement or position

There is no sponsored tier, no paid inclusion, and no featured slot. Retailers are listed alphabetically within your marketplace. Commission rates play no part in what we list, what we recommend, or the order links appear in — the software that orders them has no access to commercial terms.

4. No exclusive agreements

We do not sign exclusivity with any retailer or network. An exclusive deal would turn this catalog from a comparison into a sales channel, and the moment you cannot see a competing place to buy, everything above becomes decorative.

5. We list retailers who pay us nothing

When a specialist retailer is the right place to buy something and has no affiliate program, they are listed anyway, on equal footing, marked as earning us nothing.

6. No prices

We do not publish prices or discount claims. Prices change faster than a static page can honestly track, and a stale price across several retailers is a misleading comparison regardless of which program's rules permitted it.

Who we're affiliated with, today

We currently earn nothing. No affiliate relationship on this site is live yet — every link here pays us zero. This page will change when that changes.

We earn nothing on links to: Amazon.ca, Canadian Outdoor Equipment Co., MEC.

Governance

This commercial relationship is recorded in the council's conflict-of-interest register alongside every other one. Advisors and directors with a commercial relationship to a listed brand do not review that brand's products, and the relationship is noted.

Questions or corrections

If something here is wrong, or a recommendation looks like it was bought, tell us — info@nationalbushcraft.ca. A standards body that cannot take that question in public has no business setting standards.