Prime Minister Mark Carney is expected to announce the government’s long-awaited decision about the future of 24 Sussex Drive in the coming weeks, sources tell CBC News.
The derelict residence is meant to house Canada’s prime ministers, but the 34-room home has been sitting vacant for more than a decade. By 2024, the building was gutted to strip out mould, asbestos and rodents.
Carney revealed in the spring he wants to keep the prime minister’s official residence at 24 Sussex.
“You’re not going to see me at 24 Sussex, but I would like to see my successors at 24 Sussex in some way, shape or form,” Carney said in an interview in April with CBC News: The National.
“I think it’s a responsibility to hand off things better than you found them. And certainly the current state of 24 Sussex couldn’t be any worse. It’s an embarrassment.”
Rideau Cottage ‘inadequate’ home for a PM as decision on 24 Sussex looms: internal memo
State of 24 Sussex ‘an embarrassment,’ says Carney
Successive prime ministers have been unwilling to take the political risk to spend the tens of millions of dollars needed to renovate the 19th-century home which allowed it to slowly deteriorate and become uninhabitable. Carney, who resides at Rideau Cottage, said in May his government was working on announcing what it plans to do about 24 Sussex.
CBC News is not naming the sources because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
A sweeping plan for Ottawa approved on Tuesday by the board of the National Capital Commission, which manages official residences, said a “key objective” is to preserve and enhance the setting of 24 Sussex.
The commission’s plan lays out a vision to make the national capital more beautiful over the next two decades and includes proposed projects.
It recommends rehabilitating the property at 24 Sussex, considering expanding the property and looking at restoring decorative features on its facades that were added in 1949.
Carney wants 24 Sussex fixed up for future prime ministers
“Rehabilitate and renew the property, a classified federal heritage building, in a way that reflects its role as the official residence of the prime minister of Canada,” the National Capital Core Area Plan said.
“Consider scenarios for expanding or enlarging the property that use contextual architecture and noble materials, in keeping with the original residence.”
Tobi Nussbaum, the CEO of the commission, said the government has been “seized” with what to do with the prime minister’s official residence and Carney “has been clear that he wants to make a decision on this.”
He doesn’t know what the government’s decision is, he said, but is confident it’s coming.
“I’m really encouraged by that level of engagement,” said Nussbaum at a news conference on Tuesday.
Heritage Ottawa sent Carney a letter in the fall calling on him to preserve the heritage building built in the late 1860s by Joseph Merrill Currier, an MP and lumber baron, and designed in the Gothic revival style.
That non-profit organization is among those who have also long called on the government to once and for all take decisions about 24 Sussex out of political hands.
The government has also been considering an ask by former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
In one of his final acts in power, Trudeau called for the creation of an advisory panel of former prime ministers to make recommendations about the cost, security requirements and location of the residence.
CBC News reported last year the government was considering three options for the prime minister’s official residence:
Officials in 2025 estimated the price tag could range between tens of millions of dollars to more than $100 million.
The RCMP, which is tasked with protecting the prime minister, told CBC News in March it had already handed over its recommendations to the government about what it would take and cost to secure the options for the official residence under consideration.
Rideau Cottage called ‘inadequate’ for PM as 24 Sussex decision looms
An internal government memo said Rideau Cottage, where Trudeau had also lived, is inadequate and is increasing security risks in part because it’s close to the Governor General’s residence on the grounds of Rideau Hall.
The Privy Council Office has not yet responded to a request from CBC News about the timing of a decision or if plans are in the works to create an advisory panel to help guide decision-making moving forward.
