IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/lauspo/v99y2020ics026483771932160x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Privatizing Canadian government land and real estate: Railroads, reconciliation, and rip-offs

Author

Listed:
  • Whiteside, Heather

Abstract

This paper explores three questions on public land and real estate privatization in Canada: which state institutions are involved, what logics guide these privatizations, and what are the implications of how privatization manifests? Answers are interwoven through three sections. The first section summarizes the historical context and institutional reconfiguration of public land and real estate management systems in capitalist-colonial Canada, examining the public sector institutions and ideas involved: the logics and procedures of surplus disposal (Canada Lands) and sale and leaseback (Public Works). The second section explores the implications of surplus land sales through snapshots highlighting some of its consequences: urban development in Toronto through the privatization of once-public railway land, and what the privatization of military land means for Indigenous reconciliation (and capitalist commercialization) in Vancouver. The third section delves deeper into how privatization manifests by exposing several scandals in the sale and leaseback of government buildings managed by Public Works, with implications revealed through the activities of its central private sector agent, the shadowy family-run private trust Larco Investments Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Whiteside, Heather, 2020. "Privatizing Canadian government land and real estate: Railroads, reconciliation, and rip-offs," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:99:y:2020:i:c:s026483771932160x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104821
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026483771932160X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104821?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harvey, David, 2005. "The New Imperialism," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199278084.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrew Allan & Ali Soltani & Mohammad Hamed Abdi & Melika Zarei, 2022. "Driving Forces behind Land Use and Land Cover Change: A Systematic and Bibliometric Review," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-20, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Patricia M Martin, 2005. "Comparative Topographies of Neoliberalism in Mexico," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 37(2), pages 203-220, February.
    2. Ahmed, Abubakari & Kuusaana, Elias Danyi & Gasparatos, Alexandros, 2018. "The role of chiefs in large-scale land acquisitions for jatropha production in Ghana: insights from agrarian political economy," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 570-582.
    3. Knudsen, Daniel C. & Rickly, Jillian M. & Vidon, Elizabeth S., 2016. "The fantasy of authenticity: Touring with Lacan," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 33-45.
    4. Sarah Ryser, 2019. "The Anti-Politics Machine of Green Energy Development: The Moroccan Solar Project in Ouarzazate and Its Impact on Gendered Local Communities," Land, MDPI, vol. 8(6), pages 1-21, June.
    5. Ross Beveridge & Philippe Koch, 2017. "The post-political trap? Reflections on politics, agency and the city," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(1), pages 31-43, January.
    6. Beatriz Bustos, 2015. "Moving on? Neoliberal continuities through crisis: the case of the Chilean salmon industry and the ISA virus," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 33(6), pages 1361-1375, December.
    7. Bradley R Wilson, 2013. "Breaking the Chains: Coffee, Crisis, and Farmworker Struggle in Nicaragua," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(11), pages 2592-2609, November.
    8. David Kyuman Kim & John L. Jackson Jr., 2011. "Introduction," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 637(1), pages 6-16, September.
    9. Gérard Duménil & Dominique Lévy, 2014. "The crisis of the early 21st Century: Marxian perspectives," Chapters, in: Riccardo Bellofiore & Giovanna Vertova (ed.), The Great Recession and the Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism, chapter 2, pages 26-49, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Carol Upadhya, 2017. "Amaravati and the New Andhra," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 12(2), pages 177-202, August.
    11. van Meeteren, Michiel & Kleibert, Jana, 2022. "The global division of labour as enduring archipelago: thinking through the spatiality of ‘globalisation in reverse’," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 15(2), pages 389-406.
    12. Adam Branch, 2013. "Gulu in War … and Peace? The Town as Camp in Northern Uganda," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(15), pages 3152-3167, November.
    13. B.S. Chimni, 2010. "Mapping Indian Foreign Economic Policy," International Studies, , vol. 47(2-4), pages 163-185, April.
    14. Nikita Sud, 2020. "The Unfixed State of Unfixed Land," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 51(5), pages 1175-1198, September.
    15. Eve Bratman & Ted Auch & Bryan Stinchfield, 2022. "The Fracking Frontier in the United States: A Case Study of Foreign Investment, Civil Liberties and Land Ethics in the Shale Industry," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 53(3), pages 469-494, May.
    16. Woods, Kevin M., 2020. "Smaller-scale land grabs and accumulation from below: Violence, coercion and consent in spatially uneven agrarian change in Shan State, Myanmar," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    17. Anders Lund Hansen & Henrik Gutzon Larsen & Adam Grydehoj & Eric Clark, 2015. "Financialisation of the built environment in Stockholm and Copenhagen," Working papers wpaper115, Financialisation, Economy, Society & Sustainable Development (FESSUD) Project.
    18. Vasudha Chhotray, 2006. "Contrasting visions for aid and governance in the 21st century: the White House Millennium Challenge Account and DFID`s Drivers of Change," Economics Series Working Papers GPRG-WPS-062, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    19. Ugo Rossi, 2019. "The common-seekers: Capturing and reclaiming value in the platform metropolis," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 37(8), pages 1418-1433, December.
    20. Meina Cai & Jianyong Fan & Chunhui Ye & Qi Zhang, 2021. "Government debt, land financing and distributive justice in China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(11), pages 2329-2347, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:99:y:2020:i:c:s026483771932160x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joice Jiang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/land-use-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.