It's government funded and costs next to nothing.
CEGEP has two streams, pre-university or professional. For the latter, you learn skills like aircraft mechanics. For the former, you pick a stream that bulks up what would normally be first-year university courses like calculus, biology etc for a science stream.
However, you are required to take approx 15-20% of your courses in an "opposite" stream to force you to get acquainted with other alternatives before you commit to university. In addition, the structure is much like university (you pick your classes & schedule, class sizes are increased compared to HS, your responsibility is increased) which is a good transition for university if that's where you're headed.
I think it's a wonderful system and I wish it was more widespread.