National assets deserve maintenance and care

Prime Minister Mark Carney has proposed a national design-and-build competition to restore 24 Sussex Drive, the long-abandoned official residence of Canada’s prime minister, with Canadian firms invited to compete, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada advising on the process, architect Moshe Safdie chairing the jury, and a winning proposal expected by Canada Day 2027. The Rideau Hall Foundation is also expected to lead a national fundraising campaign to cover all or most of the cost, which is a politically important detail because it means Ottawa is at least attempting to solve this problem without simply handing taxpayers another blank cheque.

There will be a cheap kind of populism that says Canada has no business fixing up 24 Sussex while ordinary Canadians are struggling with rent, mortgages, groceries and taxes. That line may get applause because it sounds frugal, humble and sensitive to the times, but it misses the larger point. The prime minister’s official residence is not Mark Carney’s private cottage, nor is it a luxury perk for one politician. It is a national asset, a classified heritage property, and one of the institutional symbols of Canadian public office. Serious countries maintain serious institutions, and they do not let them rot simply because every prime minister is afraid of a bad headline.

That is why Carney deserves credit for finally proposing something workable. The plan is not merely to patch up an old house and move on. It is to rehabilitate and modernize the property as a secure, accessible, sustainable and functional official residence and working venue, while preserving its heritage character. More importantly, the proposed structure creates a clearer path than the usual Ottawa pattern of studies, delays, consultant reports, political hesitation and quiet deferrals.

Canadians should not pretend this problem appeared last week. The National Capital Commission has already spent $4.3 million on abatement and decommissioning work that began in May 2023 and finished in November 2024. That work included asbestos removal, the removal of obsolete mechanical, heating and electrical systems, and the cataloguing and storage of heritage materials such as doors and mouldings. In 2021, the NCC estimated that 24 Sussex needed $36.6 million just to bring it to good condition, and that figure did not include every possible modern upgrade for security, accessibility or current building code requirements. In plain English, the number Canadians heard was never the full number.

This is what deferred maintenance does when political leaders allow optics to replace stewardship. It turns a repair into a renovation, then turns a renovation into a crisis, and then politicians act surprised when the bill arrives with interest attached. The public sees a large number and assumes extravagance, when often the real scandal is that smaller, more responsible decisions were avoided for years until the only remaining choices became expensive, embarrassing and politically toxic.

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper should have dealt with this during his 9 years in government. There is nothing contradictory between conservatism and taking care of national assets. In fact, there is something deeply conservative about maintaining what you have inherited, respecting institutions, avoiding waste, and refusing to pass avoidable costs to the next generation. Letting a public asset decay so that a government can avoid an ugly headline is not fiscal conservatism.

Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau then made the problem worse. His decision not to live in 24 Sussex may have been understandable given the condition of the building, but it effectively normalized abandonment. Once the prime minister moved elsewhere, the residence became easier to ignore, easier to defer and easier to treat as someone else’s problem.

Carney’s proposal is therefore welcome not because it is glamorous, but because it is practical. He has put forward a public competition, a private fundraising component, heritage preservation, modern functionality and a deadline for selecting the winning proposal. He has also said he does not expect to live there himself, which strengthens the argument because this is clearly not about his personal comfort. It is about future governments, institutional continuity and the basic responsibility to maintain what belongs to the country.

The scandal is not that Canada is finally fixing 24 Sussex. The scandal is that we waited until decay became the strategy.