Roundup: Admitting defeat with 24 Sussex?

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There is a rumour circulating in Ottawa, put in print, that former prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper are offering to lead a charitable exercise of collecting donations to renovate 24 Sussex in the hopes that this will finally depoliticise the whole affair, and the work can finally get done. It’s absolutely discouraging, however, because if it’s true, it’s a giant admission of defeat when it comes to the ability for political decision-making and frankly our ability to have…not even nice things, but useful, official things in this country.

This is supposed to be why we have the gods damned National Capital Commission to deal with the official residences, so that it takes it out of the hands of the government of the day, but even then, it doesn’t exactly work because if the government doesn’t give them the budget allocations to do the work, it doesn’t get done. And they got the allocations for necessary repairs at Harrington Lake, or doing routine work at other residences like Stornoway, but 24 Sussex keeps being punted, as they do yet more studies about what possible alternatives could be, each more wildly fantastic or implausible than the last (such as converting the National Research Council building on Sussex into a quasi-White House with residences and offices, which is absolutely bloody ridiculous), and with the RCMP security wish list driving up the costs every time.

It’s an official residence. It should have the capacity to host a couple of working dinners (not state dinners—that’s why we have Rideau Hall or the Sir John A Macdonald Building across from the West Block), but that’s about it. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, but I do think it should retain period features (which in my estimation should mean restoring the original façade with the turret) because this is a heritage property and we are a city of a lot of neo-gothic architecture. But we shouldn’t need a fundraising drive if everyone behaved like adults, which unfortunately seems like too much to ask these days.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russia fired five missiles at Zaporizhzhia on Friday, killing four, and a drone strike early Saturday morning on Kharkiv killed six and injured at least ten. Russians claim that they have taken control of the village of Vodyane in the east, but Ukraine denies the Russian reports that they have reached the suburbs of Chasiv Yar, one of their strongholds in the east. Ukraine did stage a strike against Russia’s Morozovsk military airbase, destroying six Russian warplanes.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1776278198684201137

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau was in Calgary for a pre-budget announcement about innovation funds for housing technology, such as manufactured components.
  • Here’s a look at how premiers are annoyed with Trudeau for not consulting them on “legacy” projects like dental care or pharma care (even though they can read).
  • With demand having fallen, the government will be providing its last airlift out of Haiti on Sunday.
  • Both the federal and Ontario governments were blindsided by Ford’s decision to delay their production of EVs by another two years.
  • From the foreign interference inquiry, we learned the government asked Facebook to take down a disinformation piece about Trudeau’s record as a teacher.
  • The inquiry also heard of the difficulty in dealing with Chinese social media sites like WeChat, much of which operates as something of a black box.
  • Convicted RCMP spy Cameron Ortis has been granted bail while he files an appeal.
  • The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a Canadian bank was right not to pay a European bank after a dispute between Bombardier and the Greek defence ministry.
  • Liberal MP Anthony Housefather ended weeks of speculation by saying that he will stay with the Liberals (and take on new responsibilities in fighting antisemitism).
  • A school district in New Brunswick is suing the government to prevent implementation of their restrictive gender and pronoun policies.
  • Justin Ling interviews Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s biographer.

Odds and Ends:

https://twitter.com/maxfawcett/status/1776429786963067004

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