VAUGHAN, Ont. - Liberal Leader Mark Carney says his government would double Canada’s rate of residential housing construction over the next decade to nearly 500,000 new homes per year.
There is no significant amount of federal public land sitting unused where people want to live. Only 4% of the total land in the provinces are federally owned, and most of that is parks and military bases.
The provinces themselves have some public land, but even most of that isn’t in or near cities where people want to live. They could build entirely new cities from scratch in slightly less desirable locations, but that’s about it.
The cost to buy private land to do this would be impossibly expensive.
It’s a great concept, but it simply doesn’t work in reality.
The feds own a lot of land in downtown Ottawa. Tunney’s Pasture alone is huge. I’m not sure that’s true elsewhere. Does Thunder Bay have a sizeable block of federally owned land, for example?
I mean, even in Ottawa is there actually enough federal land for that to matter? And if it’s not enough there, there definitely isn’t enough in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Victoria, etc.
There is no significant amount of federal public land sitting unused where people want to live. Only 4% of the total land in the provinces are federally owned, and most of that is parks and military bases.
The provinces themselves have some public land, but even most of that isn’t in or near cities where people want to live. They could build entirely new cities from scratch in slightly less desirable locations, but that’s about it.
The cost to buy private land to do this would be impossibly expensive.
It’s a great concept, but it simply doesn’t work in reality.
Redeveloping public owned lands in cities should be a start. I’ve been to community meetings to discuss redeveloping federal land in Ottawa.
Ottawa has a significant amount of federal land. Transforming unused federal office space to mixed used residential will be a game changer.
There is a crown corp that now owns public federal land and is either redeveloping for mixed use or for tourism:
https://www.clc-sic.ca/
They also own the CN Tower. Beefing this up would be great.
The feds own a lot of land in downtown Ottawa. Tunney’s Pasture alone is huge. I’m not sure that’s true elsewhere. Does Thunder Bay have a sizeable block of federally owned land, for example?
I don’t know. You’d have to look that up.
I’m from Ottawa, not Thunder Bay so I cannot answer that question.
I mean, even in Ottawa is there actually enough federal land for that to matter? And if it’s not enough there, there definitely isn’t enough in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Victoria, etc.
In Ontario it is all north of Lake Huron, too.