Canada Pulls Plug On Historic Preservation

"[L]ast week, during its wide-ranging purge of 'wasteful programs,' [Canada's Federal Government] discontinued the $30-million [Commercial Heritage Properties Incentive Fund (CHPIF)].

[The CHPIF] offer[ed] developers financial incentives to rehabilitate commercial buildings so deteriorated they might otherwise be torn down, [rescuing] traditional streetscapes across the land. In Thorold, Ont., a $300,000 CHPIF grant boosted the restoration of an 1846 flour mill into a residential and commercial complex. In St. John's, $498,630 in federal money helped King George Properties Inc. to convert the King George V Building to a boutique hotel. In Toronto, $1-million in CHPIF aid leveraged the restoration of the Dickensian Distillery District.

'[Without CHPIF], the cities are on their own to save these buildings,' says Donald Luxton, a Vancouver heritage consultant. 'And smaller cities have no resources to carry the ball.'

In the past three decades, Canada has lost about one-fifth of its pre-1920 heritage buildings to demolition. The CHPIF was the only federal program designed to help save those buildings; now, the 2½-year-old project, which was administered by Parks Canada, will wind up operations with about $3-million left unspent."