Federal government selling land in Glace Bay
The Cape Breton Regional Municipality is being asked to take on a number of federally owned properties in exchange for a one-time $1-million payment for ongoing maintenance.
Gerard Shaw, regional director of Cape Breton operations with Public Services and Procurement Canada, appeared before CBRM council this week to provide an overview of the federal agency’s operations in Cape Breton and its ongoing efforts to divest itself of properties considered surplus to ongoing operations.
Under policy set by Treasury Board, Public Services and Procurement Canada cannot provide the CBRM with a transfer payment to take the properties, Shaw said. However, there was an argument presented to Treasury Board behind proposed the $1-million payment.
“It’s basically to say for the federal government, since we’ve reduced this liability on the federal government’s books, we’ll transfer that to the CBRM so the CBRM can take ownership of these properties,” Shaw said, noting the payment would come with no strings attached.
With the decommissioning of Enterprise Cape Breton Corp. in 2014, Public Services and Procurement Canada took over all of its former properties.
Shaw said CBRM staff has identified lands that will be required for infrastructure purposes such as sewer or water projects. He said the federal government is not asking the CBRM to take on properties that are deemed to come with significant risk from issues such as mine water management requirements or potential subsidence.
Shaw noted the lands include 14 kilometres of rail corridors, about half of which the CBRM already has infrastructure-related interests regarding. The CBRM has also expressed some interest in using the corridors as active transportation links between communities.
If the CBRM doesn’t agree to take on the properties, they will be likely go up for public sale, in parcels.
“That is our mandate, that is what will happen if indeed the CBRM doesn’t acquire the rail corridors, at the end of the day,” Shaw said.
CBRM CAO Marie Walsh said staff will prepare a report on the properties with recommendations. She said they will also forecast the costs associated with the maintenance of the properties for 10 years.
A number of properties are currently in use as municipal recreation facilities, including Dominion No. 4 recreational field in Glace Bay and Plummer Avenue ballfield in New Waterford. PSPC also prefers for the CBRM to take on Dominion No. 21 community park in Birch Grove, which is actually the site Shaw identified as being the impetus behind the $1-million payment. If the CBRM didn’t accept that site, they would have to go back to Treasury Board, he said, and the level of funding would likely be significantly lower.
Public Services and Procurement Canada has sold off a number of federally owned properties already, including the land on which the Ben Eoin Marina sits, the Aerie Estates subdivision and MacDonald House in Sydney. The overall sales process is expected to take eight to 10 years.
The process allows for governments — other federal departments, municipal and provincial — to first express interest in properties. Public Works and Procurement Services currently has a listing of lands that the province and the Cape Breton Regional Municipality are interested in acquiring. The federal agency must also carry out Aboriginal consultation prior to placing lands up for sale. Because some of the lands are former industrial sites, determining that there are no remaining environmental issues was also a requirement.
Of the more than 5,000 hectares of lands at issue, 60 per cent are resource lands, while 14 per cent involved transactions that were underway prior to the dissolution of ECBC. About 12 per cent will be retained due to ongoing obligations, four per cent are commercial holdings, three per cent are residential lands, while six per cent are remnant lands scattered throughout the region. Another one per cent involves rail corridors.