Since the mid-1990s, Canadian public real property (land, buildings, and equipment) has been subject to regular scrutiny through bureaucratic procedures aimed at ridding the state’s estate of all ‘surplus’ properties. Surplus is transferred to Canada Lands Company, a state owned enterprise charged with privatizing public land. Bureaucratic devaluation thus allows for subsequent revaluation through multiple forms of state-sponsored remediation: the physical, legal, and financial manipulation of public property by Canada Lands Company. Analyzing Canada Lands Company’s history, role, budgets, and activities, this article uncovers the particular dynamics of how Canadian public land is being privatized through devaluation and revaluation by the state. Two arguments of broader significance for literatures on the political economy of the state and public land frame the discussion: (1) Canada Lands Company’s activities speak to the important managerial role played by the (Canadian) state in the land dispossession process; and (2) Canada Lands Company’s treatment of surplus public land as a financial asset is a distinguishing feature of the Canadian public property management system, setting it apart from elsewhere.
The theme issue ‘Making Space for the New State Capitalism’ brings together insights from critical economic geography and heterodox political economy through a series of papers to be published in three installments, each accompanied by an introductory essay written by the guest editors. In this, the first of these introductory commentaries, we highlight some of the potentially productive ambiguities that accompany the new state capitalism rubric. Subsequent introductory commentaries will consider the consequences of embracing relationality, spatiotemporality and uneven development (along with the second group of papers); and the challenges and opportunities of thinking conjuncturally (with the third group of papers).
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