Commons Speaker gets keys to West Block
Canada’s parliamentarians got the key to their new home Thursday when control of the West Block was officially transferred to the House of Commons after its seven-year, nearly $1-billion renovation. MPs move to the West Block in the new year after Parliament’s Christmas break, making way for a decade-long, stem-to-stern makeover of Centre Block. An enormous ceremonial key, crafted using copper from the West Block roof, was presented Thursday to Geoff Regan, Speaker of the House of Commons, in a ceremony with Carla Qualtrough, minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility. “This magnificent space will make it a little easier for us to leave the Centre Block as it undergoes its own renovation,” Regan said. “This might feel like a brand-new building, but you’ve done a great to make us feel like we’re still at home.” Architects created the country’s interim House of Commons by enclosing the West Block’s central courtyard under a glass ceiling supported by an earthquakeresistant steel framework. Though completely enclosed, the space is airy and filled with natural light, part of the architectural intent of merging the natural world outside with the interior. “Above and beyond the marvel at the innovations that have been made to the West Block, I’m struck by the care and attention that has been brought to preserving the grace and dignity of this building,” Regan said. “Although ours is a young country, the House of Commons is rooted in tradition and history, and this space in which members debate and create our laws should reflect our past as well as our present.” The new Commons has seats for as many as 400 MPs (some members have been without desks since the Commons expanded to 338 seats in the last election). Enclosing the courtyard increased the space inside West Block by 50 per cent. If the new underground visitors’ centre and entrance — excavated from the bedrock between the West and Centre blocks — is included, the building has doubled in size. Even so, space will be tight in the new temporary home of Parliament. There are 40 per cent fewer seats in the visitors’ gallery and public tours won’t take place when Parliament is in session. Last year, 365,000 people toured Centre Block. The remodelled West Block also features spacious committee rooms and a modern, high-tech cabinet room, with drop-down video screens, video-conferencing equipment and sophisticated, hush-hush security features to foil electronic eavesdropping. Meanwhile, work continues at the former Government Conference Centre, which will be the interim home of the Senate during the Centre Block restoration. That work is keeping pace with the West Block work, said Rob Wright, assistant deputy minister of the parliamentary precinct branch of the Department of Public Works and Government Services. “It (the Senate) is exactly on the same track, the same schedule,” Wright said. Some offices have already been transferred to the new buildings, with the rest of the MPs and senators to move over the Christmas break, he said.