What does 24 Sussex Drive say about a country when its leader can’t live in the house that is designated for him?
Stephen Harper was the last prime minister to occupy the official residence of the prime minister of Canada, and his successor, Justin Trudeau, refused to live in the home he grew up in. For almost four decades, governments of both parties have lacked the will to create a safe home for their leaders.
Now Mark Carney has announced that he intends to renovate the buildings. Initially called Gorffwysfa (Welsh for place of peace), the premises were first occupied by Louis St-Laurent in 1951. The property had been expropriated in 1943 and, through battles in both the House and Senate over renovations, was finally occupied by the then-sitting prime minister. Nine prime ministers have since occupied the home.
Lacking maintenance, the building fell into disrepair and with dated wiring, mould, rodents, central air conditioning and poor winter heating, no wonder Justin Trudeau would not live there—nor his successor.
Many of the other capital residence buildings are also in disrepair, and the anticipated budget to refurbish all of them is estimated to be $175 million over 10 years, with 24 Sussex alone costing $36.6 million to restore.
The National Capital Commission stated that the annual maintenance bill to maintain and provide security for the buildings and their occupiers would be $26.1 million per year. Those numbers were published in 2021 and will be much more expensive today.
One could ask the simple question: “How could Canada allow our ‘culturally significant properties’ to fall into such a state of disrepair that they cannot be lived in?”
The simple answer is politics. Rather than tackle the problem, governments have been comfortable tossing the ball away and forgetting the maintenance issue. The leader of the opposition stated that he was not worried that the prime minister couldn’t live at 24 Sussex, even though he had no issues living in the leader of the opposition’s heritage home.
Twenty-Four Sussex Drive is a modest residence for one of the leaders of the G-7 countries. It pales in comparison to the White House at 55,000 square feet—24 Sussex has 35 rooms and is only 12,000 square feet.
Seventy per cent of Canadians have said that the country should provide a residence for the prime minister. Yet there is no clear understanding by any faction of what that residence should be or how much money should be spent. So, the government will again study the national buildings, hoping that magic will follow and a political solution will be found. In the meantime, all of the National Commission buildings will continue to fall deeper into disrepair.
