Public Services and Procurement Canada, which owns or leases more than 30 million square feet of office space in Ottawa-Gatineau, plans to reduce its office footprint by up to 50 per cent over the next decade in an effort to lower operating costs and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Already an Insider? Log in
Get Instant Access to This Article
Become an Ottawa Business Journal Insider and get immediate access to all of our Insider-only content and much more.
- Critical Ottawa business news and analysis updated daily.
- Immediate access to all Insider-only content on our website.
- 4 issues per year of the Ottawa Business Journal magazine.
- Special bonus issues like the Ottawa Book of Lists.
- Discounted registration for OBJ’s in-person events.
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
The federal government says it is aiming to cut the average time it takes to dispose of surplus properties in half – from nine years to four-and-a-half – as it looks to reduce its real estate costs and accelerate the conversion of empty office buildings to housing.
Public Services and Procurement Canada, which owns or leases more than 30 million square feet of office space in Ottawa-Gatineau, plans to reduce its office footprint by up to 50 per cent over the next decade in an effort to lower operating costs and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
In their budget tabled last week, the federal Liberals said the government will invest $1.1 billion over the next 10 years to help “accelerate the ending of leases and disposal of underused federal properties” across Canada.
The civil servant in charge of much of the government’s real estate portfolio told the audience at Ottawa’s city-building summit Tuesday morning that offloading office buildings has traditionally been a complex, time-consuming process that involves consulting various federal departments, other levels of government, Indigenous groups and other potential partners before the properties are put on the open market.
“Historically, the government is not very good at disposing surplus properties,” Mark Quinlan, the assistant deputy minister of real property services at Public Services and Procurement Canada, said during a presentation at Lansdowne Park’s Horticulture Building.
“That process takes a lot of time, and it was never the priority for most departments.”
Quinlan, who has been in his current role since last October, said his department is compiling a “master list” of surplus federal office buildings with the aim of selling them to developers who can convert them to housing and other uses.
He told the crowd of nearly 300 business leaders the process of getting surplus office buildings off the government’s books currently takes an average of nine years. He said his department is hoping to cut that timeline in half to help address Canada’s escalating housing shortage.
