24 Sussex price gouging

Just as we all suspected, the cost to renovate 24 Sussex Drive has ballooned well beyond the initially quoted figure of $10 million. According to iPolitics, it’s now about $38 million; four times larger than the property’s assessed value.

Yet, there is no shortage of fervent defenders maintaining it petty, distracting and downright unpatriotic to question such an amount. A “drop in the bucket!” they say. “Would you rather the prime minister sleep in a tent?” they harrumph. “Don’t you care about projecting an image of power and modernity to visiting diplomats?”

This, my friends, is exactly why the price tag has ballooned to $38 million; because of a bunch of ninnies wringing their hands and moaning that it may be pricey, “but can we dare to spare the expense when Canada’s history and place in the world are at stake?”

The result is a perfect opportunity for construction gougery: a buyer with a bottomless treasury filled by other people’s money? Check. Prestige property with strong emotional capital? Check. The nostalgia-filled childhood home of current prime minister? Check. A residence claimed to shoulder the shared history of a great and mighty people (at least since 1950 or so)? Checkmate.

There are shrines at which contractors pray for this type of opportunity.

It would be downright irresponsible for any respectable contractor to do anything but repeatedly press the National Capital Commission — which is responsible for the Sussex Drive property, among other Ottawa treasures like biking trails — into needlessly expensive ideas.

“Sure the Malaysian teak baseboards are 800 per cent more expensive than the oak ones,” any contractor worth his salt would say. “But what if some future Canadian prime minister is using 24 A view of 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa. Sussex to broker a final Middle East peace deal and the Israeli delegation is momentarily put off by the sub-standard trim? Do you really want that on your conscience?”

And, sure enough, $38 million is the LOWBALL figure. Some prior (pre-Justin Trudeau) estimates had the renovations as high as half a billion dollars. In that plan, the prime minister’s residence was to be transformed into a glimmering compound with parking garage, “situation” rooms, offices and full facilities for state dinners. Presumably, it also would have included a secret underground storage facility for the prime ministerial batplane.

Why would anything so grandiose even be considered unless planners suspected they were dealing with a client gullible enough to go for it? total rehab for Parliament Hill expected to clock in at $3 billion. Oh sure, that’s less than the cost of our submarine program. But it is an utterly insane amount of money to renovate what is, essentially, a campus of stone office buildings.

For the price of a West Block reno, Canada could have built the Queen Mary 2. It could almost have purchased the most expensive home in the entire world.

Three billion dollars, meanwhile, is almost twice the price of the Empire State Building which, I remind you, is a giant pile of revenue-generating heritage office space in the middle of Manhattan.

Despite what we may wish to believe, Canadian monuments are not “priceless.” If the Peace Tower suddenly needs $1.5 billion to remain standing, we knock that sucker down, replace it with a replica and put up a simple monument to all the useful stuff we bought instead.

And really, 24 Sussex isn’t that great a house. The 12,000-squarefoot structure wasn’t intended to serve as the eternal home of Canadian leaders. It was built by a Vermont-born lumber baron and wasn’t even adopted as an official residence until after the departure of William Lyon Mackenzie King, who preferred living in the former home of Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

This isn’t the White House. It hasn’t been the site of critical decisions that changed the course of world history. It’s not where Canadians gather at times of national triumph or sorrow. It’s just a private residence where prime ministers sleep, eat and are naked sometimes.

If you don’t know a prime minister personally, you probably don’t even know what the inside looks like. I understand the virtues of preserving heritage buildings. After all, I live in Edmonton, a hideous grey bulldozer-happy land where we can’t even use the same arena for more than 30 years without restlessly building a new one.

But try calling up a European friend and explaining why an official residence in use for only 60 years must be preserved “at all costs.” In Britain, where people still get drunk in 400-year-old taverns, and Oxford’s New College dates from 1379, they’d probably suggest the PM could get something with a bit more bang for the $38-million buck.

If Canada were to enter this project with a bit more skepticism, I guarantee we’d be getting a better deal. Once the option of turning 24 Sussex into dozer bait is hanging over the negotiations, rest assured that everyone will be a lot less likely to recommend turning it into Xanadu.