Usually a spot for stuffy official receptions, one April evening of last year the official residence of Canadian prime ministers briefly turned into a teenager’s party house.
In the early hours, paramedics were called to 24 Sussex, following reports of a drunk teenage girl near the property’s outside gate. She had allegedly taken ill after a pool party celebrating the 18th birthday of outgoing prime minister Stephen Harper’s son, Ben.
A terse media statement from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in charge of protecting the prime minister and his family, confirmed only that it “was a medical call and not a police matter. It did not involve any of our protectees”.
It was still a rare glimpse for the public behind the curtains of the state-subsidized mansion on the bank of the Ottawa river, a place where Canadian heads of government raise their families and go home after a day at the office, as well as a heritage property used to host foreign dignitaries and the political elite.
24 Sussex was back in Canadian headlines this week after prime minister-designate Justin Trudeau – who spent his own childhood there as the son of former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau – announced he will not move his family into the residence.
The fact is, the property is a drafty wreck.
A 2008 report from the federal auditor general tallied it needed some C$10m (about $7.5m) in extensive repairs that would take at least a year to complete – everything from cracked windows and caulking to failing air conditioning and “deficient” plumbing.
“The only element of the exterior at 24 Sussex that is in good condition is the roof,” the government spending watchdog added.
It was bad enough that some pundits urged the Harpers to vacate the building to allow for its refurbishment.
Now, even low-tax advocacy groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation are on board with the Trudeaus allowing for the renovations to take place, as long as costs are reasonable and transparent.
“We’re not anarchists,” Aaron Wudrick, the organization’s federal director said. “Most of us wouldn’t move into a house that hasn’t seen significant repairs for 50 years.”
The 24 Sussex renovation controversies that dogged another prime minister, former Tory leader Brian Mulroney, probably made Harper gun-shy about pulling the trigger on spending millions from the public purse for repairs during his time in office, Wudrick noted.
If Canada’s new Liberal government manages to keep the renovations tab in check, Trudeau will avoid the fate of other politicians and dignitaries who faced a sticker-shocked public fretting over cost of housing their leaders.
Last November, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, angered Turks and had opposition parties pouncing as the costs for the lavish new presidential palace – with 1,150 rooms spread over 3.1 million square feet (288,000 square metres) and reportedly filled with imported Italian trees – spiked to nearly twice its official estimate to $615m.
Erdogan defended the spending, saying it was “the nation’s palace”, not his, and pointing to the costs of refurbishing Britain’s Buckingham Palace.
The cost of urgent repairs to that crumbling palace were recently estimated at £150m (about $229m). The Queen’s London residence hasn’t had a major refurbishment since the 1950s and she may be forced to move out during the overhaul.
Those costs have led some to question why British taxpayers are on the hook for repairs and whether the royals should open the palace to the public more often to help pay the bills.
In that context, 24 Sussex and its repairs seem relatively modest.
Catherine Clark, the daughter of former prime minister Joe Clark, who spent time there as a toddler and worked on a documentary about the property, told the Guardian Canadian public opinion appears to have come around on the issue.
“It is a home in desperate need of repair,” she said. “Frankly, the general reaction is enough already, let’s move on with this.”
