MANITOBA'S senior minister has refused to champion what could be one of the largest residential real estate deals in Winnipeg in the next decade.
Treasury Board President Vic Toews said Friday the vacant Kapyong Barracks land on Kenaston Boulevard is not his file.
Need a place to live? Frustrated by all those empty houses on Kenaston BOulevard? Well, don't look to Manitoba's senior minister Vic Toews for help.
He referred reporters' questions to Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor. And he said requests by the Manitoba government to fast-track Kapyong should also be directed to O'Connor's office.
"It's out of my hands," said Toews. "They'll have to go and speak to the Department of National Defence."
O'Connor's office in turn referred all questions to bureaucrats at the Department of National Defence.
Kapyong has been a no man's land since soldiers left three years ago, and a deal that would transfer the lion's share of the property to a development company has been mired in red tape.
That deal, worth $8.6 million, includes only the "working" part of the barracks, not the 359 homes around the base. Those homes must be sold to the Canada Lands Company -- the Crown company that develops surplus land -- in a separate deal that is not even on the government's radar.
Meanwhile, more than half of the homes sit vacant. Housing advocates have been lobbying to make them available to ease the city's shortage of rental units.
The province has asked Ottawa to waive or temporarily suspend a rule that says only military personnel, reservists or RCMP officers can rent military housing. Manitoba Family Services and Housing Minister Gord Mackintosh said his government favours using some of the vacant homes for new Canadians or low-income families. He said his government would even be willing to kick in some funding in the form of rent subsidies.
But Toews said it's not up to him to waive the rules and that the matter must be raised with DND. He said he would be willing to "facilitate" such a discussion.
Calls and e-mails to O'Connor's office netted this response from spokeswoman Isabelle Bouchard: "We are following the legal process."
Bouchard referred all calls to staff at DND.
Last month, Winnipeg South Centre MP Anita Neville grilled O'Connor at a committee hearing, asking him when Kapyong would be transferred to Canada Lands. He said he believed the hand-over had already happened and Neville had to correct him. She also asked whether the "permanent married quarters" could be rented out to needy families.
O'Connor told Neville he would investigate the possibility and get back to her, though Neville said Friday she was still waiting for a response.
Neville said rules barring civilians from renting the PMQs are fairly firm, but exceptions have been made and her Liberal government was working on such a compromise before it was defeated last year.
The second-best option is to fast-track the hand-over of the houses to Canada Lands, who can rent them out while the company plans exactly how to transform Kapyong into a new neighbourhood with houses, condos, shops and parks.
"It will depend on whether there's the will, internally and politically, to make it happen," said Neville.
Very preliminary plans for Kapyong could include as many as 1,600 housing units, making it among the largest infill development in Winnipeg's history as well as one of the largest new developments on the horizon.
maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca
-- With files from Mia Rabson
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