Free as it ought to be -- payed for out of yours and everyone's taxes. Parking should have been free, to be honest. Nothing I hate more than seeing basic services turned into money-making opportunities for the shady.
Do you know how much it would have cost in the US? More than $1.5MM is the estimate I got. If you were to pay here as a non Canadian. About $200-300K. The missing $1MM, where is it going and where is it coming from? Everything is relative when you say everyone pay because of taxes. I would from you salary and insurance. At the end of the day, who's paying more? I don't know. But I'll tell you something: in the States, our choice would have been an late and illegal abortion or a bankruptcy. Today, we have a marvellous son that our society decided we should protect at all cost.
Actually, Canada pays less on a per citizen basis than the US does on it's health care. America can still have it's wars, bank bailouts and health care, if they weren't politically gridlocked with the issue.