Young architects and designers will be able to participate in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The decision to save 24 Sussex and engage the country in its restoration was courageous and timely.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on July 6, 2026.

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered Canadians a wonderful gift on the eve of Canada Day.

After years of indecision and neglect, the historical home of the prime minister will finally be properly renovated.

His background in building led him to make a number of good decisions in advance of the announcement.

First, he decided to engage the country by seeking restoration proposals from heritage architects. That decision will spawn an increase in heritage architecture, something that is badly needed in a country where approximately 1.3 million homes are empty and unused because they are in a serious state of disrepair. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, almost eight per cent of Canadians currently live in houses with major structural issues, including lack of electricity.

In the past number of years, when the housing crisis reached a zenith, little attention was paid to the fact that we have more than a million existing homes across the country that could be restored and made available for social housing.

The national “Design and Build” competition is open to Canadian architectural firms and will seek innovative solutions on energy efficiency and use. The proposal also involves a potential crowdfunding and fundraising element, to be managed by the Rideau Hall Foundation.

The jury for the proposals is chaired by Moshe Safdie, acclaimed architect behind the glorious construction of Canada’s National Gallery. Most significant, Carney applied a one-year timeline to the process that will be overseen by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

The building, which dates back to 1866, has been vacant for more than a decade. Prime minister Stephen Harper was the last head of government to live in the residence, and when he moved out in 2015, it was vacated for restoration. But no decision was made on the restoration until last week.

Some proposals included simply abandoning the building in favour of a new build with banquet facilities at the edge of Rockcliffe Park. That proposal sounded eerily familiar to the current decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to install a baroque banquet hall on the White House property. The Trump monstrosity is supposed to house 999 people and is to be built at a cost up to $600-million. Trump has publicly promised that no taxpayers’ money will be used in the construction, but in a recent media leak, it appears that approximately half of the cost will be paid by the public purse, allegedly to enhance security.

In the lead up to last week’s decision, the government received a report from our own security force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In that report, it claimed that simply upgrading security at the current address would cost upwards of $32-million, making the restoration too expensive to consider. That figure, in a report subcontracted by the RCMP, was subsequently discredited.

Back in 2025, Harper joined former prime minister Jean Chrétien in an offer to raise money to replace the ailing edifice. Chrétien approached the Prime Minister’s Office with the proposal, but was quickly rebuffed. The PMO believed a fundraising campaign would be too politically controversial and declined the offer.

But times have changed and so has the prime minister. Carney is not afraid to take the risk of fundraising, and the idea of crowdfunding through social media venues is another way to engage Canadians in support of the process.

There will, no doubt, be some naysayers, led last week by the leader of the opposition, who claimed that the prime minister should not move on his own housing while millions of Canadians are facing housing and affordability crises themselves.

But former New Democratic Party leader Thomas Mulcair pointed out that Poilievre cannot say much because he lives in Stornoway, another official residence paid by the taxpayers. In Poilievre’s case, he stayed at Stornoway after he lost his seat, even though he had no association with Parliament.

So, he will not be leading the charge against the restoration.

By launching a national competition, Carney has managed to focus attention away from himself and in favour of a whole new generation of Moshe Safdies.

For the next year, the country will be directly engaged in the discussion about possible design plans. They will also be able to contribute to the restoration of the prime minister’s residence.

Young architects and designers will be able to participate in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The decision to save 24 Sussex and engage the country in its restoration was courageous and timely.

After all, 24 Sussex is Canada’s home.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on August 28, 2023.

OTTAWA—Canada’s housing dilemma is not just a national crisis. It is a stark example of what happens when the federal government vacates an area of responsibility in the name of good government.

For decades, provincial governments have lobbied to receive more responsibility and funding for housing, claiming their proximity to residents gives them a better understanding of the challenges. Starting back in the 1980s, the national government signed agreements turning over housing responsibility to provincial governments.

It wasn’t until 2017 that the federal government joined together with most provincial governments in launching a National Housing Strategy (NHS). It included a 10-year, $40-billion plan to house 530,000 families and reduce chronic homelessness by 50 per cent.

Not surprisingly, the province of Quebec has refused to participate in the national strategy, claiming it “intends to fully exercise its own responsibilities and control over the planning, organization and management of housing on its territory.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was criticized when he claimed recently that “housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility. It’s not something that we have direct carriage of. But it is something that we can and must help with.”

As usual, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has a simple solution. He promises to withhold transfer payments to local governments who do not fast-track housing.

The latest scapegoat for the hike in housing costs is immigration.

But an in-depth review of the demise of housing availability in Canada should start with a document released by Bill McKnight in his authority as minister responsible for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) back in 1986, entitled, “A National Direction For Housing Solutions.”

At that time the CMHC was also known as “Canada’s housing agency,” but this report was the first step in dismantling a national housing policy in favour of multiple provincial policies.

Back in 1984, the federal government spent $1.4-billion annually on housing. But the McKnight document relegated the federal role in housing to solely one of funder, with provincial governments responsible for building housing and developing sound policy.

The only areas that remained in federal hands, largely because of active lobbying, included co-operative housing developments, urban Indigenous housing, and some housing rehabilitation programs. The rest was transferred to provinces, and it took more than 30 years for the federal government to re-insert itself into the conversation in 2017.

Thirty years of stagnation in social housing construction has certainly come with huge consequences. Now, when a national push for housing comes, the focus is on reducing the number of people who need houses, not decreasing the size of our housing footprint.

The relative house size in Canada is more than double that of the United Kingdom. In the UK, people inhabit an average 818-square-foot home, compared with 1,948 square feet in Canada. China’s average urban house size is 646 square feet.

At the same time, fewer people are living in increasingly bigger homes. So, when we are looking at housing policy, we have to consider that size matters. Simply cutting back on immigration is not the solution to this problem.

If we really want to tackle the housing problem, we need to look at a national housing strategy that does not encourage people to live in overhoused, underutilized structures.

Most older Canadians remember the time when a 500-square-foot house provided habitation for eight to 10 members of a family. Now we have mega homes that often house only two or three people.

The current focus is on building new homes, but renovations should also be included in the discussion. Urban planners are trying to figure out what to do with vacant office buildings and shopping destinations. Landfill sites across the country are also filled with building materials from houses that have been torn down because their inferior building quality was designed for obsolescence after 30 years.

These questions are complex. A single government is not going to fix them. But removing the federal government from responsibility for housing policy in 1986 was a huge mistake that we are paying for today.

It has taken us 30 years to move forward with a fix. Trudeau actually had the courage to reinsert an active role for the federal government in tackling the housing crisis.

That decision happened in 2017. The feds have been back working on housing for the past five years.

A problem that took 30 years to develop will take another 10 to fix.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.