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Politics

    • Don Martin: Now that the 24 Sussex sabotage is complete, it's time to call in the demolition crew

    A gardener works on the grounds at the Prime Minister's residence at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, Tuesday May 6, 2008. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tom Hanson A gardener works on the grounds at the Prime Minister's residence at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, Tuesday May 6, 2008. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tom Hanson
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    They may rate among Ottawa鈥檚 most secretive, staid and slow decision-making bodies, but nobody ever pegged the National Capital Commission for an evil genius.

    That changed Thursday when their secret strategy for became clear.

    By declaring even the kitchen a fire hazard and health risk to continued service, the very kitchen where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his family and his visitors have been catered to remotely for seven years,

    This is not a lamentable development.

    Having been inside the place for a number of media functions, I can say there isn鈥檛 a room on the main floor which would elicit a gasp from even the most easily-impressed visitor.

    It reeks of lousy 150-year-old interior design that is now serviced by the complete failure of heating, cooling and ventilation systems.

    This week鈥檚 complete shutdown order would seem to be the culmination of a seven-year case-building effort to ensure that even historical romantics, who vividly imagine the prime minister鈥檚 residence as some sort of save-at-all-costs shrine, see the preservation effort as futile.

    The NCC scheme was first hatched in 2015 when they finally found a prime minister who would refuse to move in.

    Justin Trudeau, who could claim internal knowledge of the house as his coming-home-from-the-hospital baby nursery, declared it unfit for his family鈥檚 safe habitation and moved across the road to the "Rideau Cottage" on the Governor General鈥檚 sprawling estate grounds.

    Then the commission issued a report detailing in painful detail how 24 Sussex is the money pit from hell and an architectural disaster.

    There were no accessible washrooms for visitors, the kitchen was inadequate for official functions and the 鈥渄ining room is both too large for a family and too small for state or official dinners.鈥

    Layered on top of basic design flaws were fire hazards everywhere, chronic plumbing failures and the lack of air conditioning, not to mention asbestos, lead and mould throughout the interior.

    Then came the jaw-dropping price tag. Just the essentials would cost $36 million excluding a new pool house, updated security and measures to meet modern building code requirements which, given traditional government contract inflation, likely means a $100-million rebuild.

    So after ploughing $5.4 million into basic maintenance over the last dozen years, the NCC unleashed the genius part of their plan: Do nothing.

    After seven years of skeleton staff occupancy, the completely empty mansion will now wait until spring when crews move in to remove "obsolete systems and infrastructure" including asbestos, heating and electrical systems. This sounds a lot more like pre-demolition than an overdue start on rehabilitation.

    And so, give the NCC credit for doing what it does best.

    They鈥檝e let Father Time do his dirty work on the increasingly dilapidated mansion and now it鈥檚 time to declare mission accomplished.

    All that鈥檚 missing are a few opinion polls to show that the public has lost interest in saving the unsalvageable and a fleet of bulldozers can fire up and fix the problem in a few weeks.

    Of course, demolition would come with the political headache of building a replacement.

    It could be a relatively simple matter of evicting the British High Commissioner from the nearby Earnscliffe estate. At least that mansion has Canadian historical significance as the home of Sir John A. Macdonald and the place where he died.

    But if diplomatic niceties prevent such a move, surely it鈥檚 time to build a grand, if not grandiose, residence with space for official functions to last for the coming five decades or so.

    It obviously needn鈥檛 match the real estate standards of other G7 leaders, like the 694,000-square-foot German Chancellor鈥檚 residence, the White House or Italy鈥檚 presidential abode in one of the world鈥檚 largest palaces.

    But no matter what you think of Trudeau and his high-life hotel tastes when travelling abroad, Canadian prime ministers should not be housed as tenants in a 鈥榗ottage鈥 formally used by the vice-regal鈥檚 top assistant.

    So keep the 24 Sussex Drive address, ditch the house and be grateful. Whatever rises anew on that prime river view lot will be considerably cheaper and undoubtedly better than fixing the residential wreck that sits there now.

    That鈥檚 the bottom line.

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