Sunday, September 29, 2019

Why do you even exist, Canada Lands Company.

CN Real Estate in Canada.
CN Real Estate was created in 1980, to sell the real estate holdings of a Crown corporation called the Canadian National Railway. The government of Pierre Trudeau conducted an inventory of CNR properties and discovered that the publicly-owned corporation owned:
100,000 acres of land.
Roundhouses, including the Spadina Roundhouse that was demolished to make way for the Skydome and Skydome Hotel in Toronto.
Hotels, including the Chateau Laurier.
CN Towers in Toronto, Saskatoon, Edmonton and London, Ontario, which was demolished.
Thousands of train stations.
Office buildings.
Warehouses.
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CN Real Estate morphed into the Canada Lands Company in 1995; and many of the same players were involved, most notably Moya Greene, who dismantled the Canada Post Corporation and fought with unions; and then privatized England's Royal Mail. (She was even honoured for that debacle.)
The mandate of the Canada Lands Company is to privatize federal real estate in Canada. I am filled with anger at the prospect of citizens of Canada being tenants in their own country. Frankly I am too old and I will not be around to see that day happen. But future generations will be negatively affected when they see fences around parks and museums; when they encounter PRIVATE PROPERTY and NO TRESPASSING signs on former public property. National Historic Sites of Canada will be reduced to rubble because vacant land is more valuable than a penitentiary or a train station or a Dominion Building.
The CLC is currently "in negotiations with government departments and agencies regarding a future acquisition of 4,965 acres (2,010 hectares.)". (From: "2018.19 Canada Lands Company Annual Report.")
During my employment years I never earned enough money to buy a house. I was either a cleaning lady (at the Conference Centre in Ottawa) or a cashier at a Becker's food market, or I sold Fuller Brushes door-to-door during the late 1960's.
But my family and I, and millions of other Canadians owned federal property worth $60 to $80 billion dollars in 1985. I could walk into a post office with marble floors and 12-foot-high ceilings and say to myself "I own this building."
I could walk into Manpower offices and talk to employment counselors who gave me meaningful advice on how to find a job. The Manpower offices were located in Federal Buildings that featured clock towers.
In 1965 my fellow students and I visited the Experimental Farm and looked through the Dominion Observatory telescope. And in 1967 we visited Expo 67 in Montreal.
A photo booth picture of me at Expo 67.

In 1978 I rode on an elevator to the top of the CN Tower in Toronto and when I looked at the scenery below I said to myself "I own all that waterfront land where the CN and CPR trains and railway tracks are located."
Why is one of the richest countries in the world in a mad dash to sell off:
 museums,
 military bases,
 Natural Resources Canada properties;
 lighthouses;
 DFO Coast Guard Bases;
 prisons;
 infrastructure in the National Parks;
 post offices;
 astrophysical observatories;
 Canadian Broadcasting corporation studios and office buildings;
armouries
;...the list goes on.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi denationalized everything he could get his hands on---his 800-page list of "surplus" properties included beaches; islands; museums; post offices...see the article "The Colosseum is not (yet) for sale" on the economist.com.

A few days ago a fire broke out in the former Post Office located at 30 Russell Street, Smiths Falls, Ontario.
 Are the following properties going to be privatized?
-The Kingston Penitentiary and nearby Portsmouth Olympic Harbour.
-The Campanile Complex on 1495 Heron Road, Ottawa which is known as the Federal Study Centre. 
-The Edward Drake Building, 1500 Bronson Avenue, Ottawa, known as CBC National Headquarters.
-Confederation Heights - a federal employment campus in Ottawa.
-The Corrections Canada Ontario Staff College, 443 Union Street West, Kingston.


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