I will not be a tenant in my own country.

Throughout my lifetime I have worked at various minimum wage jobs, and never had enough money to buy a house.
But I, and 33 million other Canadians, did own $60 to $80 billion dollars worth of federal property. I could walk into a Manpower office and say to myself "I own this building." I could walk into a post office with marble floors and 12-foot high ceilings and say to myself "This is my property."
The people of this nation owned the Parliament Buildings, the Connaught Building, museums, art galleries, railway stations, hotels, National Parks, the Rideau Canal, harbours, bridges, Library and Archives Canada, Lebreton Flats, Confederation Heights, the Federal Training Centre on 1495 Heron Road, Ottawa; lighthouses... Our Maple Leaf Flag and Coat of Arms were proudly displayed on Government of Canada buildings.

It has become apparent that national and global entities do not believe that ordinary Canadians are entitled to this wealth. I hear the words and phrases:
privatization
surplus real property
the government does not need bricks and mortar to govern.
the private sector can manage Crown properties more effectively.
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I watch in horror when Dominion buildings, lighthouses, grain elevators, the CN Tower in London, Ontario and many other landmarks are flattened by wrecking crews.
 Buildings and park land in Ottawa are being sacrificed on the altar of "affordable housing." They will not be affordable for long, the Canada Mortgage and Housing agency transferred Regent Park to Toronto Community Housing and then TCH privatized much of the land.

$1 million dollar condominiums in Regent Park, a former Canada Mortgage and Housing federal property. (A recent Globe and Mail newspaper photo.)

The City of Ottawa is part of a project entitled the Surplus Federal Real Property for Homelessness initiative: Affordable housing is earmarked for:
933 Gladstone.
part of Lebreton Flats.
rowhouses opposite the Adult High School on 300 Rochester, built by Canada Mortgage and Housing during the 1960's.
1010 Somerset, a PWGSC building and "there will be no height limit."
part of CFB Rockcliffe.
the RCMP Headquarters along the Vanier Parkway.
800 Montreal Road.

The City of Ottawa wants 13,700 acres of the Greenbelt which is controlled by the National Capital Commission. What a windfall that would be---if  all that land is practically given away and then sold at market value a few years later.
The entities who are pulling the strings do not care about us. They do not care about the fact billions of dollars worth of federal land will eventually be flipped.
If you don't believe me...
Watch a  BBC television program called "Location, Location, Location" with Kirstie Allsopp. UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher privatized thousands of "council flats" that were built for geared to income housing. Tenants were then evicted and the developers and rich people moved in.
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The Civic Hospital relocation will negatively affect tourism, take away Queen Juliana Park, wipe the Dominion Observatory off the map, increase the number of vehicles on the road and create noise and environmental pollution. The Civic Hospital Neighbourhood, Little Italy and the Glebe Annex  have to deal with a 65-storey condominium on the corner of Preston and Carling; intensification on 933 Gladstone, Lebreton Flats and the Booth Street campus; high-rises on 101 Champagne; a mega-hospital on the Farm and a "wall of condos" lining Carling Avenue. The damage inflicted on this area will last for generations. As former Councillor Diane Holmes told Ottawa Citizen reporter Dave Reevely, the current municipal government does not represent the community, they represent the development industry.

This is not a scene from an apocalyptic horror movie like "Escape from L.A." This is what Ottawa's Mayor and councillors envision for Dow's Lake and the Farm. Politician and writer Clive Doucet is calling for a public inquiry into what is happening in the near-west of Ottawa. This image is from "Reimagine Ottawa" a group headed by Clive Doucet.

 House of Commons  Ottawa   June 14, 1978.
Mr. Arthur Huntington, PC.
     "...In the late 1960's, I guess about the year 1968, a successful history of Crown construction with a system of checks and balances and accountability came to an end. We saw the evolution of politically well-connected developers moving in on the domain of the Department of Public Works to the point where, in the next decade, that department was reduced to little more than a real estate management function with the National Capital Commission acting as its agent in the capital region."