Canadian Architect magazine says Canada 150 fund should have been spent on landmark projects

The editor of Canadian Architect magazine would have liked to have seen large landmark projects to mark Canada's 150th, rather than smaller infrastructure projects.

"It's a big anniversary. And, I think it's an opportunity to mark where we are at as a country now and the country we want to create for the future,"said Elsa Lam. Lam raised her concerns in a recent editorial.

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Lam said that compared to Canada's 100th anniversary in 1967, this year's $300-million Canada 150 fund has been used ona broad range of smaller projects, such as re-roofing hockey arenas and resurfacing trails, rather than for "landmark, cultural projects" such as the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown.

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Lam suggested that projects, such as a provincial museum on P.E.I., may not have been able to meet the fund's short timelines for proposals and applications compared to smaller projects.

As well, she noted that the fund has a preference to have projects completed by the end of 2017.

Lam said that these smaller projects are valuable to communities, but they don't have the same impact as the landmark projects. And, even though the money on P.E.I. is also being used to renovate the Confederation Centre of the Arts, she said that use doesn't go far enough.

"It's about creating a legacy for a big anniversary. And, it would have been really nice to have the kind of legacy that we have from those 1967 projects,"she said.

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