Roundup: Suck it up and fix 24 Sussex

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Since this is apparently my week for being cranky about stuff, I’ll turn my ire today on the various naysayers regarding renovations to 24 Sussex. And I’m going to say off the bat that they need to basically shut it and just fork out the money because guess what, we have obligations in this country to both official residences and heritage buildings, and we have to stop being so petty about it. What becomes clear in the more detailed breakdown of the options available that was posted in The Huffington Post was that a lot of these additional costs are not about the building, but rather they are about security. That’s part of why I find the demands that they have a residence that will be open to tourists to be boggling, because I’m not sure what purpose that serves. Of the other official residences, only Rideau Hall and the Citadel are partially open to the public, and even then in fairly controlled circumstances, and those are also working residences – something that 24 Sussex, Stornoway, the Farm and Harrington Lake are not. And why 24 Sussex should have the capacity for state dinners is also a bit baffling because the PM doesn’t host state dinners – the Governor General does. That’s his job as representative of our head of state (being the Queen). Can some official dinners be held at 24 Sussex? Sure. But not state dinners. I also find the fact that they’re even exploring the possibility of turning 24 Sussex into a working residence to be boggling, right up to including a $562 million option of abandoning 24 Sussex in favour of taking over the National Research Council’s headquarters at 100 Sussex and turning that into a Canadian White House with PMO offices on top of an official residence. Baffling, really.

So while the calls to bulldoze 24 Sussex return in force thanks to performative cheap outrage, and we clutch our pearls at the ongoing maintenance costs of the building being vacant while the property itself doesn’t increase in value, I say we stop trying to turn this into a tourist trap or working residence, which means not building an annex over the pool house to turn it into an apartment so the main house becomes something they don’t live in, and instead just focus on renovating the house itself and keeping it strictly as an official residence. And no, we can’t just bulldoze it because it is an important heritage property, and would still be even if it didn’t house prime ministers, but it does, so now we are obligated to deal with it the right way. In fact, I say we restore its façade to its original, pre-1950s features to better respect its heritage and history. Add to that, we should not only better empower the NCC to protect our official residences and heritage properties so as to let successive prime ministers (and opposition leaders and Speakers) know that it’s not up to their discretion when renovations need to be done to these properties, but we should also empower them to go after the previous inhabitants for negligence in allowing the property to decay this much. Maybe that will send a message.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau was in Liberia talking women’s empowerment and human rights including LGBT rights in a country where sodomy is criminalised.
  • Trudeau has been forced to spell out the lack of link between himself and the Trudeau Foundation, while Chuck Strahl got huffy and resigned from its board.
  • John Geddes puts the fundraising issue into context, while the Globe continues to trade in innuendo about the Chinese businessmen in attendance.
  • The Information Commissioner has concerns about the legislation for the national security committee of parliamentarians.
  • While the government continues to pay into the Joint Strike Fighter programme, they met with Boeing seven times more often than Lockheed Martin.
  • They also had over 200 civil servants sign lifetime non-disclosure agreements around the fighter jet procurement process, possibly for the first time ever.
  • Japan’s ambassador to Canada says the TPP isn’t totally dead and hopes that if all 11 other countries ratify it that it will pressure the US into signing.
  • The government is due to make decisions on several pipelines today.
  • A bill has now been tabled that rolls back the Fair Elections Act changes along with expat voting limits (which I’ve already noted are really not unreasonable).
  • All signs point to a looming referendum on electoral reform.
  • Maryam Monsef says she if she’s under investigation by immigration officials, they haven’t told her. (OMG, can we let this non-story die too?)
  • Kellie Leitch decided to one-up Maxime Bernier and call for CBC to be dismantled, so now this is a political football in the leadership race.
  • William Watson digs into StatsCan’s latest release on the one percent in Canada (spoilers: They’re not gaining like in the US).
  • Colby Cosh has an eye-opening read about the actual lack of a PTSD crisis and warns against the media creating one for the sake of sensationalism.
  • Robert Hiltz adds some reasons why it’s for the best that Trudeau not call out Donald Trump.

Odds and ends:

Here are the five finalists for the woman who will appear on the next series of bank notes.

I covered the Shaw Rocket Prize event on Wednesday night.