Rideau Cottage, Stornaway, and 24 Sussex Drive.
Three of Canada’s official residences, two in stages of disrepair, while the third is, well, a cottage.
The Americans have their White House, the South Koreans have their Blue House, and most of the world’s nations have some form of presidential palace, although the word palace doesn’t really have a good Canadian feel to it. That said, the point is that most countries have an official residence for their head of state, although I’m not counting Hitler’s Führerbunker, since that place wasn’t really big on splashy amenities and I don’t recall any elaborate state dinners being held at the place that served as home for the Nazi dictator’s final days. To fit into my discussion, I’d prefer there not be bullet-hole pockmarks in the brickwork, bomb damage to the exterior and the grounds, and the torched remains of the owners in the front court. Decidedly not the look and feel I’m going after here.
I’m going to start with Stornaway, the official residence for Canada’s Leader of the Opposition, or Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition as the full title goes, except that title doesn’t fit the guy who would wear that title, and wear that cape, mostly because of his loyalty to one person on Earth, and it ain’t Charles III.
Pierre Poilievre has a bit of a problem here. You see, you need to be more than just a party leader to live in this place, tucked away in the same tony Rockcliffe neighbourhood as 24 Sussex and the Governor-General’s residence, where Rideau College is located. What you need to be is an MP — Member of Parliament — and that, as far as Poilievre is concerned, is the rub with all this, since the Tory leader up and lost his seat in Carleton when the votes were counted last Monday night. Lost is a gentle word, given his finish some 4500 words in the rear-view mirror of the victorious Liberal candidate, Bruce Fanjoy. It appears that the people of Carleton didn’t just want to get rid of Poilievre, they wanted to get rid of him quite a bit.
And so there he is, homeless. Unless of course, he can find some new digs out in Battle River-Crowfoot, an Alberta riding that the victorious Tory MP Damien Kurek has offered to step aside in, as in resign his seat and make it available for Poilievre to run there and get back into the House of Commons. Kurek is doing this because, of course, he’s a Canadian hero, so long as the only person you ask about this is Damien Kurek himself and possibly his goldfish.
But there’s a process to this, and along with the process, a timeline, and the timeline’s not the greatest. First, Kurek needs to resign his seat, which is all well and good for our hero, a man stepping aside so as to renew Canadian democracy and, even more important, to accept whatever plum appointment (cabinet?) Poilievre might be able to make should he ever gain control of the government, a notion that was very difficult to write and even more difficult to contemplate. But that’s the way the world works. Unless, in some sort of out-of-world result, the residents of Battle River-Crowfoot get it into their heads that they already elected a perfectly good Conservative MP and have no happiness for an Ontario boy being parachuted into their riding to reap their assumed support. Albertans can be remarkably weird, so don’t bet against it.
The problem for Kurek is the fact that, before he resigns, he needs to be in possession of something to resign from, and so until he takes the oath of office — something all MPs must do, incumbents or not — he can’t resign. Officially, Kurek has no seat until he takes that oath.
It’s anticipated that that oath-taking business will take place sometime in June. Which means that if Kurek resigns that very day, we still have to wait for Prime Minister Carney to call a by-election, something he says he’ll do at the earliest moment. That Carney fellow is a better man than I am, because I’d let them sit around without a leader in the House for as long as I could rather than spend the taxpayers money on helping a guy get elected after he was rejected decisively in his own riding by his own people. When you threaten the jobs of federal public service workers and become a big cheerleader for the trucker convoy losers that jammed up Ottawa and terrorized the population, then stuff like this can happen. It seems the folks in Carleton weren’t terribly crazy about the guy this time around.
Go figure.
If/when Carney calls that by-election, then we’re looking at a period between 36 to 51 days before election day, that being the time needed for the by-election campaign itself. That puts us into July-August-September before Slogan Boy gets to take his own oath of office as the proud representative of the fine folks of Battle River-Crowfoot, a place that will be on the minds of other Canadians for precisely five minutes, four more than they deserve.
I have a question.
Why should we let Poilievre continue to live at Stornaway when he doesn’t fit the requirements for residency? Stornaway is an official residence, not some place for Poilievre to squat in while he sorts out his political life. The timeline mentioned above might have him ineligible for Stornaway for as long as five months, so why should we just give him five months free rent in a residence funded by the taxpayers of Canada? There’s no doubt in my mind that if the roles were reversed, Poilievre would tell Carney to pound salt and would accord no similar generosity to the Liberal leader. No doubt about that at all. He’s distasteful human being, one that a lot of you voted for, a really good look for you.
I do entertain one fantasy moving forward, and that would be for the cantankerous Battle River-Crowfoot crowd to get their ornery hats on and send Poilievre packing a second time. I swear, I’d be drunk for a week if that happened, and I don’t drink anymore, but surely to God an exception can be made for something like that. The protest movement responsible for a ballot in Carleton containing the names of over 90 candidates says it plans to get to work in Battle River-Crowfoot which, depending on the literacy of the deplorables, could lead to a whole whack of voter confusion, something they already suffer from, but on a whole new level.
All I can say is that it’s a good thing for Poilievre that Carney’s the landlord and not me. The guy would be living behind No Frills if it was my choice, although I’d make some sort of humanitarian gesture for his wife and children, although his wife is a rabid Conservative ex-staffer that drips the same level of bile that he does. But I’m sure that if there’s anyone who could whip a dumpster into shape, it would be her. Still, though, I’m supposed to be a nice guy. It’s just that I’m not when I’m dealing with people who are not nice people themselves. I tend to give them the same respect they give to everyone else, which isn’t much.
Mark Carney, like Justin Trudeau before hime, will reside at Rideau Cottage on the grounds of the residence of the Governor-General. The reason for this is the poor condition of 24 Sussex, the official prime ministerial residence since Louis St. Laurent in the 1950s. It’s certifiably worthy of being condemned, and the only good thing that can be said about it is its location on a juicy slice of land overlooking the Ottawa River and the Parliament Buildings atop the hill opposite from it.
24 Sussex is run by the NCC — National Capital Commission — which is embroiled in a decades-long debate as to what to do with the place. Renovate it at the cost of many millions, or bulldoze the sucker and put up a new place, also many millions of dollars. The reno folks are the purists who claim that 24 Sussex is a heritage building that should be restored to a level of grandeur that maybe it never had in the first place. While they dither, we have no official residence for our head of state, nor will we if somebody doesn’t light a match under their collective asses. Any extensive renovation would result in essentially a brand new structure with a heritage face, which is nice and everything, if not a tad on the naive side.
Push the place down, and build something new that can handle all the requirements of a prime minister, his/her family, and the diplomatic requirements needed for state occasions. If necessary, add a nostalgic look to the exterior of the place, or maybe save some legacy details from the bulldozer’s blade and incorporate them into any new structure.
And don’t worry, in another twenty years, nobody will care. A few more years after that and we can start looking at the place with the nostalgic feelings we seem to crave. Maybe put in copper-topped turrets like Parliament itself, to give the place that “older” feel. And then, after the passage of a couple more decades, the place will be old in its own right.
All buildings become heritage buildings with the passage of time.
Canadians 200 years from now will thank us for our prescience and good planning. Or they’re more likely to consider it a nothing-burger, if they take the time to consider it at all.
As to any by-election, it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that such efforts come in at a cost of around $1.7 million, just because Poilievre couldn’t get elected in his own riding. Which is really cool when you hold that fact up against Poilievre’s own words. After all, wasteful government spending has been in the guy’s cross-hairs since he used to chew on his box of soothers.
“Only Common Sense Conservatives will fix the budget for real. We will cut bureaucracy, consultants, corporate welfare, foreign aid, and other wasted money.”
We’re not entirely sure if he considers a by-election held entirely for him as a piece of “wasted’ money. Doesn’t appear that he does.
I guess it’s different because it involves him. Which raises the spectre of hypocrisy, something Common Sense Conservatives swim in when convenient.
Sure Pierre. We’ll do as you say, and not as you do.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 