24 SUSSEX GUTTED
More than a year after being closed and decommissioned, the official home of prime ministers has been gutted.
Gone are the plaster, the flooring, wiring, plumbing, elevator — in effect the surface layer of almost the whole interior.
Now the empty shell is waiting for the order either to renovate it from the top to the bottom or to demolish and rebuild. At last estimate, either option would cost close to $40 million.
The National Capital Commission has posted a selection of photos online. More than 130 were also released through an access to information request from the Ottawa Citizen newspaper.
Peter Coffman, who teaches the history of architecture at Carleton University, says the photos don't look bad if they illustrate one stage toward eventual restoration of the historic building. However he's not confident that this will happen. His own home had a new roof installed a year ago “and there was a time where it looked a lot like that,” Coffman said.
But he said the “glacial pace” of making decisions about No. 24 Sussex, and the lack of commitment to restoring it at all, make him fear that the building will be abandoned.
The building has been empty since the end of 2022, when the NCC decided there were too many hazards to ignore. These included bad wiring, water pipes that were getting thinner and threatening to flood the place and asbestos. The dead mice in the walls didn't help, either. No one has lived there since the Harpers left in 2015, though until 2022 it was used as office space for some Prime Minister's Office staff. It has gradually decayed as repairs were left undone for lack of money.
With all the recent changes, the NCC says it will be safe to let the house sit unfinished until there's a decision (and a budget) for a long-term fix.
Former prime ministers Stephen Harper and Jean Chrétien have volunteered to lead a private fundraising effort to rescue No. 24 Sussex. Bob Plamondon, a former NCC board member, said this cross-party effort would make the issue less political.
“Provided they don't need funding from the government, in theory they could take this project on and contract with a registered charity,” Plamondon said in a recent interview. “As well, there's a certain efficiency in the decision-making process when it's a small group.”
A joint effort spearheaded by two former prime ministers, from two different political parties, “takes the politics out of it,” Plamondon said.