Prime Minister Mark Carney has unveiled plans to rebuild 24 Sussex Drive, the long-neglected official residence of Canada's prime minister, launching a national competition to find a new design. Carney said the government is turning to the country's most innovative architects, designers and builders in search of the most ambitious, exciting and affordable solutions to restore a residence that has stood empty and deteriorating for years.
Under the plan, a jury made up of some of the country's most celebrated and accomplished architects will assess the submitted proposals and make a recommendation to Cabinet. The winning team will be responsible for both the design and the reconstruction of the residence, and Carney stressed that they will need a credible and disciplined plan to bring the building back to life on time and to a standard worthy of the country it serves.
According to the prime minister, the winning proposal is expected to be announced by Canada Day next year, setting a clear deadline for a project that has defeated successive governments. The timeline gives the competing teams a defined target while signalling that the long-delayed question of what to do with the residence is finally being addressed rather than left to drift further.
To help pay for the work, Carney said the government will use the Rideau Hall Foundation, a charity affiliated with the governor general, to collect donations from members of the public. The amount each person can give will be capped, and corporations will not be allowed to donate at all. Carney framed those limits as a deliberate effort to avoid the kind of conflict-of-interest concerns seen when donors were invited to fund construction at the White House with few restrictions.
The prime minister was also unusually direct about who will ultimately live in the rebuilt home, making clear that it will not be him. Carney noted that his own children are already grown and said he will never live at 24 Sussex Drive, but argued that future prime ministers will need to raise their families there while they lead the country, and that the residence must be restored so they can do so safely and securely.
By insisting that he himself will never move in, Carney sought to head off any suggestion that he was using public resources to build a personal dream home on the banks of the Ottawa River. He also publicly thanked former prime minister Stephen Harper, the last prime minister to actually live in the residence, in an effort to cast the rebuild as a nonpartisan undertaking rather than a project tied to any single leader or party.
Carney closed his remarks by framing the decision as a matter of stewardship, saying that he and all public officials are caretakers of the offices they hold rather than their owners, and that they serve those offices in order to serve Canadians. He described the rebuild as an obligation to leave national institutions better than they were found, insisting the goal is to preserve a piece of the country's heritage, not to construct a lavish home for the leader of a G7 nation.