Colby Cosh: 24 Sussex is an insult to Canada? Come off it, bro

The inferior national newspaper has seen fit to bid farewell to the old year by printing another op-ed bemoaning the uninhabitable state of the prime minister’s traditional primary residence at 24 Sussex Dr. I wonder if this is going to become an actual political cause in 2026 — whether our sudden Trump-era panic about state capacity and national self-reliance is going to be pressed into the service of rebuilding or rehabilitating 24 Sussex.

On one hand, it might be nice if anyone in Ontario, at any level of government, could demonstrate an ability to actually create new housing. On the other, I’m not sure that it would be good news if the first fruits of Canada’s renewed determination to build “infrastructure” ended up being what amounts to a third official home for the PM (who has the 16-room suburban retreat at Harrington Lake, and who is currently occupying Rideau Cottage on the viceregal grounds, as his forerunner did).

Globe contributor Chris Westdal, a lifelong member of the foreign service, takes the usual flag-waving approach in appealing for a rebuild of 24 Sussex, suggesting that national pride is at stake. “Is there any other state on earth that has or would let the residence of its leader fall to vermin?” he asks, apparently unaware of the catastrophic rodent problems at the eternally miserable 10 Downing St., or of the countries that don’t provide an official residence for their head of government at all. (There aren’t too many of these, since the distinction between “government” and “state” is less pertinent to republics, but they do include two important peers of Canada, Ireland and Switzerland.)

He pleads that 24 Sussex is “incontestably an iconic national symbol — the best-known address in the land.” I am almost reluctant to attempt an answer beyond “Come off it, bro.” This assertion might have been true in my raw youth and Westdal’s, when Canadian reporters were still imperial-influenced and used 24 Sussex as a metonym as their British colleagues still use 10 Downing.

But that habit has fallen by the wayside as the house itself has been abandoned. (We speak now of the “PMO” as the locus of power.) If we joined hands on a journalistic street mission and asked some ordinary Canadians to draw 24 Sussex from memory, how does he suppose they would do? Could you describe its exterior colour without peeking?

Westdal does write about the 24 Sussex problem, or pseudoproblem, with flair; and he shrewdly avoids the classic error of blaming flint-hearted, austere voters for the bureaucratic torpor of the National Capital Commission (NCC). (Along with, perhaps, the questionable original quality of the building itself, which was never meant to be a permanent state monument.)

The disrepair of the PM’s residence is, in fact, “an insult made by our leaders to our people. I’m sure I’m far from alone in resenting the assumption clearly made by our political leaders that I am so blinded by resentment, so immature and bereft of pride, that I would punish at the ballot box any government that built a fine new residence for our leaders.”

Let’s set aside the weird bit about Westdal being resentful about being thought resentful. I don’t suppose my position on the matter represents that of the general public, but I do take a certain odd pride in Canada having arrived at a constitutionally appropriate equilibrium by accident. Leaving aside all cost issues completely, it makes perfect sense that our prime minister should inhabit a guest cottage behind the viceregal palace, and not in some boreal version of the White House, which is both source and symbol of the toxic American cult of the chief magistrate.

It makes historic sense that our House of Commons speaker lives better on the public dime than the prime minister (as he always has, here and in the United Kingdom). And while it seems faintly ludicrous that the Opposition leader’s official residence happens to be habitable and decent in an era when the prime minister’s isn’t, I am not sure this isn’t a perfectly proper way to arrange the incentives, either.

The NCC is supposed to present a menu of choices for the future of 24 Sussex early in the new year, creating a slight suspicion that Westdal has been recruited to warm us up for the most expensive option — one that attributes a sacred status to the 24 Sussex street address, and that would require us to build a full-service “residence” that can also accommodate receptions and parties held for diplomatic purposes. (If it needs to be stated explicitly, this is “public” “infrastructure” that the public will never be allowed to enter, approach too closely or even get a good look at, and, yes, this does matter.)

The first assumption incorporated here, about the importance of the 24 Sussex address, is downright silly. As to the second, you may have heard that the president of the United States has found it necessary to build a gigantic ballroom adjacent to the White House precisely because his official home is not capacious enough for executive entertaining. This project has armies of critics, but the fundamental reason for it is established and long-recognized.

Westdal, who has spent his adult life in diplomacy, insists that the building where the PM sleeps and his children do laundry or homework must also be where he receives foreign dignitaries. Someone should explain why, and by “explain” I don’t mean “assert belligerently that it is the case.”

One hopes the eventual choices suggested by the NCC are genuine and creative. The practical objections to secure, comfortable Harrington Lake as a year-round residence seem to boil down to the PM having a commute into official Ottawa. And, then again, if we construct a new palace at 24 Sussex, the need for extreme privacy will make it five or 10 times more expensive than it would otherwise be.

Assuming we can all be made to swallow that logic, the NCC has other Ottawa properties that might be repurposed affordably. I wonder if there is any legitimate reason that Laurier House, a building of greater historic and architectural distinction than 24 Sussex, could not be brought back into a role it fulfilled for a half-century. Then again, maybe it’s full of rats and asbestos, too.

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