The story
History
Crown corporations have been created to provide important services in Canada - a large, sparsely populated country - usually because the private sector was unable or unwilling to provide such services.
The first Canadian Crown corporation was the Board of Works, established in 1841 by the Province of Canada to construct shipping canals.
Many of the most significant crown corporations created in the 20th century were designed to meet transportation needs.
These include the Canadian National Railway Company (CN), created in 1922 from more than 200 companies, Air Canada, and the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority.
The Bank of Canada, originally privately owned, became a Crown corporation in 1938.
After the Second World War, federal crown corporations, such as farmers (Farm Credit Corporation), small businesses (Business Development Bank of Canada), and exporters (Export Development Canada), were created to provide loans and financial services to groups whose needs were not always met by private institutions.
Crown corporations have been most common in transport, telecommunications, utilities, and power generation, but they have also been involved in alcohol sales, gaming, finance, insurance, agriculture, culture and other industries.
Significant crown corporations include Petro-Canada, which was founded in 1975 to create a national oil Crown corporation; and Canada Post Corporation, which in 1981 replaced the federal Post Office Department.
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In the 1970s, a debate emerged about the role and effectiveness of crown corporations, and whether they had become too prominent in the economy.
Inspired by Margaret Thatcher's sell-off of state assets in Britain in the 1980s, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney privatized many of Canada's Crown corporations, including Air Canada, Petro-Canada, and Canadair.
Sectors that were once dominated by Crown corporations, such as telecommunications, were almost fully privatized.
For example, most provinces sold off their phone companies in the 1990s.
British Columbia sold off parts of BC Hydro, Saskatchewan privatized PotashCorp, the world's largest producer of fertilizer, and Nova Scotia privatized its electricity company Nova Scotia Power.
Alberta privatized its liquor stores in 1996, although in this case, most other provinces did not follow suit.
Nevertheless, some new crown corporations have since been created, such as the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) which was formed in response to the 11 September 2001 attacks to provide passenger and baggage screening at airports (rather than leave it to airlines).
Newfoundland and Labrador
Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation Limited
Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador
Nalcor Energy
Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation
Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro
Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation
Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Corporation
Defence Construction Canada
From Wikipedia’s article on BC Pavilion Corporation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3