How 24 Sussex Drive became a rodent-infested unliveable dump

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Jordan Heath-Rawlings I think we can file this one under absolutely embarrassing, but completely. Inevitable 24 Sussex Drive is now closed and considered an uninhabitable, rodent infested fire hazard that requires significant investment before it can ever be lived in again, the road to 24 Sussex drive the official residence. Of Canada’s Prime Minister becoming a rodent infested, unlivable mess is a long one, and there have been so many times this outcome could have been avoided. Here, for instance, is a story from last year. Trouble is the house has been deemed unsuitable to remain the official residents of Canada’s Prime Minister with its asbestos, rickety windows, and bad wiring. If we go back a couple of years before that, we have this, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided not to live in 24 Sussex, most expected it was so renovations could begin, but four years later, there are no concrete plans. A year before that one. Here we go. There’s asbestos and the electrical system has been deemed a fire hazard. Yep. 24 Sussex. The official residence for Canada’s Prime Minister since 1951 is a national embarrassment. Two years earlier than that. Yes. It was expensive, but still the official residents of the Prime Minister, it’s in rough shape and it needs a big renovation, and it’s gonna come with a big price tag, 38 million. And finally, if it feels like Justin Trudeau has been the Prime Minister forever. Well, you should just know that his official residence being a dump predates his time in office. The commission that manages the building has been pushing for years for major renovations. In 2008, the Auditor General even recommended the Prime Minister move out for a year to get the place fixed up. But that didn’t happen. So I have a couple of questions here. The first is obvious. Why didn’t we fix what is arguably one of the most important houses in the country? The place where world leaders have met, where the leader of this country is supposed to live with his. Like, why didn’t we just do that when we learned there were problems? And my second question is a little bit bigger than that. We spend plenty of episodes of this show trying to figure out how our governments work or don’t work. What can we learn about the way our federal government does or doesn’t work by the years long saga that has left the Prime Minister’s house? Of dead rodents. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is the big story. David Moscrop is a writer, a political commentator. He is a podcast host. He hosts a show called Open to Debate, and he is an author, author of the book, too Dumb for Democracy, uh, making its Way to the United States now. David, congratulations.

David Moscrop Thank you to the big, to the big show.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings There we go. It’s always a pleasure to have you on here. And, uh, today’s topic has a long and distressing history.

David Moscrop Distressing is such an appropriate word choice. Talking about 24 Sussex is talking about the history of a petty, vindictive, small-minded nation. It really is the country in miniature.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings This is exactly why um, I wanted to call you. Why don’t we start with the actual facts. Can you just tell us about the latest report came last week on the state of 24 Sussex Drive?

David Moscrop Well, the National Post through an access to information request, got some documents on the state of the Prime Minister’s official residence, which has been managed by the National Capital Commission since the 1980s. So we’ve known for a long time that there are several problems, mold, asbestos, bad electrical, bad pipes, too small for state functions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. To that, we get to now add rat carcasses and droppings throughout the house.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings This is the official residence. Where has the Trudeau family been staying for, I guess basically his entire time as prime?

David Moscrop So the last Prime Minister to live in 24 Sussex was Steven Harper, who neglected to, as, as many prime ministers, have to upkeep the, the official residents. And then when Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister, he decided, or he and his family decided that they would live in RTO Cottage, which is quite literally across the road on the grounds of RIDEAU Hall, the residents of the Governor General. Uh, he had no interest in moving into 24 Sussex. And indeed he said he has no interest in moving there full stop. So it looks. Prime Minister Trudeau is never going to be a resident of 24 Sussex again. Of course, he grew up there right when his father was Prime Minister.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings You know, you mentioned the asbestos and, and mold and bad wiring, et cetera. Can you look back briefly and just kind of summarize the long-term disrepair here? We played a bunch of clips, uh, in the intro going back several years. How long has this been going on?

David Moscrop Well, let, let’s start here. You know, when it was, it purchased by the, actually, I should say expappropriated by the government. And turned into, uh, an official residence. Louis St. Lauren was the first prime minister to live there. They did quite a bit to sort of get it up to snuff in the 1950s. Incidentally, fun fact, prime Ministers paid rent there until 1971. That feels perfect as well, which is just so very Canadian. But, um, it was sort of kept up for, for several years and, and added to incidentally, part of the reason we’re in this mess is that Pierre Trudeau put a pool in because he was an avid swimmer and, uh, fitness buff. And then later Brian Mulroney also added some renovations. And those were big headline news, the sort of example of egregious state spending and prime ministers living large, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But by the turn of the century of the last century, it had become such a hot political potato that nobody wanted to pick it up. Nobody wanted to be burned by it. And, uh, so no one was going to fix it. Uh, there were some upgrades in the mid 1990s for security reasons. Someone broke in and tried to assassinate Prime Minister Chretien, spent something like an hour on the grounds. So they thought, Hey, maybe we should actually lock this place down a little bit. Go figure. And there was some renovations again at the turn of the century, but then no one wanted to touch it. So in, in a sense, it’s been rotting away for the better part of, of two and a half decades almost. So we were warned about this.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings As you mentioned, there was an auditor general report in 2008 that said, we gotta fix this thing. We can do it for about 10 million bucks. There was another report in 2018 that said, okay, we gotta fix this thing. We can now do it for about $40 million. Anyone who owns a home knows that if you let things go, you don’t take care of them. They just get worse and more expensive to fix. And that’s where, where we are now. So to ask it bluntly, why didn’t we fix it? What does it play here that would stop a government that spends obviously billions upon billions of dollars per year from spending 10 million bucks to fix the home of the official leader of the government?

David Moscrop It’s funny because we’re in the middle of, uh, extraordinarily expensive long-term. Renovation of the Parliament buildings. Right? Nobody has anything to say about that. Nobody cares, doesn’t make the news, right? You, you, it just isn’t a, a hot issue because there’s sort of an agreement that, well, this is, this belongs to all of us. This is for everyone. This is where the business of the state is done. We gotta fix this thing. It’s exponentially more expensive than 24 Sussex. But 24 Sussex is a Prime Minister’s residence and not a place of state function. They might entertain and stuff. They have garden parties and so on. So are staffers come and take their pictures and everyone slaps one another’s backs and everyone’s very, very important. But it’s not like the White House or Downing Street right?

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

David Moscrop So there’s a sense that it’s sort of different. Because of years of sort of petty grievances against prime ministers who had tried to, you know, improve things. Maybe sometimes going a, you know, over and above where they shouldn’t have gone.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings We can have that debate.

David Moscrop Uh, there’s a sense now that it’s a political third rail to try to fix this thing. Cause it looks like you are spending state money on big upping yourself and you know, turn it into MTV cribs.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

David Moscrop There’s a not data reference for you, so no one wants to touch it. No one wants to be the person to say, we’re gonna spend that money, despite the fact that it’s managed by the nonpartisan, state-based National Capital Commission. The government has to sign off on these things by way the procurement minister, but no one wants to wear that, that political albatross it, it ought to have been fixed. Stephen Harper was Prime Minister. Didn’t, wasn’t it ought to have been fixed when Justin Trudeau was, became Prime Minister. It wasn’t. No one wants to touch it, uh, because it’s just not worth the political capital to fix it. And so literally the thing that rots away, when we talk about the political capital and the political wrangling that goes on over this, what are they so afraid of? Are they literally afraid of the opposition? Cutting a promo essentially, uh, in the next campaign saying, you know, Justin Trudeau spent 37 million of your money to fix up his house, and they are worried that that would cost them points. Well, without a doubt, and it’s not just the opposition, the media has not been an ally here.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

David Moscrop Because, some, I mean, the media’s big and complex and multifaceted. It’s not literally every outlet in every person, but you know, some bozo’s going to make hay out of it for weeks, months, and the cost will overrun.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Right.

David Moscrop Because costs always overrun when we try to procure things in this country. Yeah. And so they’re gonna get, all kinds of numbers of stories out of it over the course of a year, maybe two years. Cuz things will take longer than we say. And, uh, it, it becomes a giant political liability because the media’s gonna make hay out of it too. Folks in the media, I should say, uh, as well as the opposition, you know, imagine Pierre Poilievre with this bone in his mouth. Right. The Prime Minister’s building himself a palace on your dime.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

David Moscrop Nevermind that he, you know, would live there if he won. He gets to live in the official opposition residence, which by the way is in pretty good shape.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Do we spend money on that?

David Moscrop Yeah, sure. Of course. But you know, this is why people are saying, and you know, Sergio Margie was out in, in, in the vapors saying this and other people have said it, we should have an all party meeting on all party consensus about what to do with this thing. The opposition party should be invited and kept in the loop and have their say The way that it’s done ultimately should be executed by a group of apolitical folks. I think John was saying that in the globe. You know, there, there are ways to depoliticize this in the sense that you could farm it out to other people. Because look, I mean, if Justin Trudeau said, today I’m going to fix 24 Sussex, I’m gonna spend the 40 million bucks, which is to say 60 million that it takes to fix this thing, he’s never going to live there.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

David Moscrop He does not benefit personally in any way, but of course folks say, wow, they’re just setting it up for the next, for, for Chris Jre, Linda, or for, for, uh, Champaign to move in. Right. Cause that’s how stupid we. How petty and stupid and, and vindictive we are. Right? And so we had up having to spend time talking about this because it is a public interest issue when there are way more important things we ought to be talking about. Well, we can’t because this is actually an important issue because, you know, the head of government needs to live somewhere and it’s embarrassing that he can’t or she can’t. And all it would take is for some basic level decency among, uh, each member of opposition in the Prime Minister to say, look, we need to get this done because we’re not doing it for this party or that party, or this Prime Minister or that Prime Minister. We’re doing it for the country and it’s embarrassing.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings You’ve mentioned a couple of times that this shows how we can be petty and vindictive. You mentioned that this saga is kind of Canadian politics writ small. Explain that to me. What does it say to you when you look at this and try to extrapolate, um, our political situation from it?

David Moscrop So, uh, I will say that there’s a structural element here that is of note, the white. Where the president of the United States lives, number 10 downing, where the prime Minister of the United Kingdom lives, the a palace where the, uh, president of France lives, so on and so forth. Uh, these places not only have historical value in residence, resonance that are much more notable than 24 Sussex. They’re also a place where state functions happen, where executive functions happen. And that’s not true of 24 Sussex. So it’s not iconic.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

David Moscrop It’s quote unquote historical in the sense that we’ve designated it historical, but it’s not really historical for, for the day-to-day. You know, Canadian who just doesn’t think about it, couldn’t care less, probably doesn’t know anything about it because why would they. That’s 0.1, 0.2. There is a kind of immature pettiness that pervades our politics, and that’s not unique to us.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

David Moscrop That exists in every democracy, and incidentally, every non-democracy too. That’s a human thing, but it manifests here in a kind of attack on any, any sense whatsoever of extravagance. But we’ve set the bar so low on what counts as extravagance, because we have for years picked on not just politicians and their spouses and their families, but civil servants and the state itself as an unnecessary burden. Or at best, a kind of necessary evil.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

David Moscrop And so anything that’s seen to make life as a functionary of the state better is seen as an extravagance that some people in the media attack, that political parties attack, try to gain political points on the day. Even though they’re gonna be saddled with the same problem, they win. And which resonates with a lot of Canadians who are struggling to get by.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm. And I will say this, I understand why someone who’s trying to get through the day, who can’t make their mortgage payment or can’t make their rent, who can’t afford groceries, can’t buy a new car, or a used car for that matter, would look at this and say, who the hell do they think they are?

David Moscrop Right? So there’s a broader problem too, which is that when the people aren’t having their needs met by a state that’s been gutted for decades and they can’t meet those needs, by design. When the people feel that they’re being screwed, they then turn around and say, well then what? What do you deserve? Nothing. And I don’t blame them for that. I really don’t.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

David Moscrop All that conspires to produce the, the utter embarrassing mess that we find ourselves in now. What role does the media play in it? Because you mentioned them earlier and as you were talking, uh, just a moment ago about the way the public perceives any kind of extravagance. I don’t know if you remember this, but when I was a, a very young reporter coming up, um, a newspaper in Toronto used to get, uh, city councillors expense reports. And they would go through it and find, you know, who bought the bubble gum, who spent money on, uh, taxis instead of taking public transit, who bought cookies for the office? And you’d look at this, you know, 20 bucks here, 50 bucks there, a, and they’d rank the counsellors based on how little money they spent on that special stuff. And it just seemed so petty, I guess. This isn’t a uniquely Canadian problem. I don’t know if you’ve watched the thick of it, the sort of great British satire of politics that sort of became Veep in the United States, created, written by the same guy. Ah, but there’s a line where the spin doctor, um, Malcolm Tucker, played by Peter Capaldi is, is reaming out the minister because she has a nice chair.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

David Moscrop And he says they don’t like you having expenses. They don’t like you being paid. They’d rather you lived in a cave.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

David Moscrop So that is an attitude that pervades, certainly the UK media picks up on this stuff too. The tabloid media in the UK is more vicious than anything we’re ever gonna have here. Right. But in here, the, the media picks up on it as, as others do too, and floats it as these stories of excess and extravagance and while people are suffering. And again, there’s something to that, but it’s not a reasonable or, or, particularly fair take, to then look at 24 sussex today and say, you know, it’ll be extravagant to fix this thing and to the media’s credit, this time the coverage has principally been, this is embarrassing. We need to fix this. Everyone’s sort of at fault.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings It is embarrassing. You made the comparison to 1600 Pennsylvania and 10 Downing Street. And yes, those places may host more, uh, state or executive functions, but it’s also like if we don’t care about where the leader of whatever, whatever party is in power, the leader of the nation lives. Like what does that say about us? That we’re just gonna let the walls of that place fill up with dead rats and, and their excrement. Like that’s how, again, it’s literally dead rats and their poop.

David Moscrop You know, here’s a thing. If you were to say, let, let’s rank the, the 10 issues you care about the most. No one’s gonna care about 24 Sussex and no one’s gonna remember. Now we get these sort of cultural touchstone moments where, you know, the, the expensive glass of orange juice or the cold brie and crackers that are these examples of, of politicians run amok, quote unquote, even. I mean, come on, there are bigger issues. But you could, in theory, do this in a way that depoliticize it as much as possible and meets the, at least the basic requirements necessary to have a functioning residence for the head of government, that that could be done. But it does take a government, uh, that has the, the guts to say, no, sorry, this is for all of us and we’re just gonna. And an opposition that agrees to minimize or ideally eliminate the amount of attacks to that they’ll get from it. I, I will say this though, we ought to also imagine a different setup that depoliticize it structurally.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Why does this have to go through the procurement minister, the NCC the National Capital Commission, who takes care of the, the area at Ottawa got nowhere or the National Capital Region. Resides, why don’t they just do this? Why does it ever have to go through a minister in the first place?

David Moscrop It should. It just should never have been something that needed to get to that level. It should be taken care of through the N mcc. Full stop. Let them do it. Let them bear the brunt because you know what would happen? No one would care.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

David Moscrop We would never talk about it. When you cite this as an example of our sometimes pettiness and vindictiveness, I can see that. I also find it just the perfect example of how levels of government in this country struggle to get anything actually done. We can allocate, we can get reports, we can say we can fix it for this amount of money. But in terms of actually taking that first step and getting someone in there to clean out the dead rats or put a shovel in the ground or whatever, that’s where all of a sudden the buck stops. And that’s why the story bugs me so much. Well, in their defense, they are gonna get the rats out.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings They could have gotten them out before they died.

David Moscrop They could have indeed. The rats are gonna go when the asbestos is gonna go. They’re gonna do some basic stuff. But the bigger story here is that. You know, they let it fall apart in the first place as you, as you suggest. And then the broader fun, the, the broader renovations that need to be done to bring it up to snuff are much bigger, a much bigger deal. Is it worth doing anything, uh, at this point to make it the Prime Minister’s residence?

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Again, my producer Joe suggested maybe the most appropriate thing, uh, would be to force the Prime Minister to live in a McMansion in Canada or a one bedroom condo downtown. I say, why don’t we just make it Trudeau’s cottage, they seem to have done just fine there. Trudeau is a big family and they all fit. So like, why not just move it along here? We’re done.

David Moscrop Or here’s the thing. I mean, you, you could say, well, you know what? We are going to have a resident that is fit for state function, for executive function. We can either, you know, do a, a massive renovation of 24 Sussex, or we can tear it down because it’s not it. You know, it’s like, it’s not like, again, it’s not this great historical landmark. So you, you could in theory tear it down. Its location is actually one of its selling points, right? It’s just across the, the way from Rideau Hall.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings I mean, literally you could, if you had a good swing, you could hit a golf ball from 24 Sussex to Rideau Hall with like a seven iron. Maybe you could, maybe when I was a kid.

David Moscrop So you, you could replace it and probably should, but then of course that would an even bigger issue, cuz it’s certainly gonna cost more than $40 million to completely replace the place. But I, I was at a, a board game night the other night and someone said, why not tear it down and have a national competition among Canadian architects to go build this. Beautiful new home for the Prime Minister official residents belongs to the country. You could be fancy, modern lead certified, an example of what Canada can do, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe we could shed this idea that we can’t build anything or do anything or procure anything. My God, think about us trying to get submarines or helicopters or jets or ships, right? Incidentally, one thing we did procure. Vaccines.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

David Moscrop Of course, obviously vaccines are orders of magnitude more significant than 24 Sussex, but that’s just the proof of point is that we do have the capacity, and at this point we don’t just have the capacity in the sense of we could, in theory do it. We have the time and the money to do it because it’s not that much money and it really doesn’t take up that much effort. It’s a tiny, tiny, minuscule line item in a country that spends billions and billions of dollars and has a debt of a trillion dollars. We spend so much more money on things you’ve never heard of. Thought of.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

David Moscrop Like studies on this or that, or money to this organization or that organization. You would never even think about it in the budget. This 40 million is nothing. It is a buck, a person, a buck, and change, a person. Right. It is less than the cost of a small coffee at Tim Horton’s. So let’s get on with it.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings David, thank you so much for walking us through all of this and, and talking it out and, uh, you know, it’s just 40 million bucks.

David Moscrop Well, you know, if the Americans like my book and if a handful more Canadians buy it, I’ll pay for the damn thing myself. Just so we can talk about something else. There we go.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Thanks David.

David Moscrop My pleasure.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings David Moscrop host of Open To Debate, an author of Tres Dumb for Democracy, which may or may not raise him the necessary $40 million. I hope we get it somehow. That was the big story. If you want more, including previous episodes with David who was always a delight, you can head to the big story podcast.ca. You can find us on Twitter at the Big story fpn, and you can email us hello at the big story podcast.ca. You can find this podcast. Wherever you like to find your podcasts, you can ask for it on a smart speaker by asking it to play the Big Story podcast. As always, please get in touch with any ideas for episodes. We’ve had some great ones lately and they are coming at you soon, I promise. And thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.