MacDougall: Rideau Hall is the right home for Prime Minister Carney
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It's official: Mark Carney prefers the cottage to his home.
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While Carney's choice to stay in Rideau Cottage instead of finding a fix for 24 Sussex Drive perhaps marks him out as prudent and careful, it also leaves the prime minister of Canada — and all future prime ministers — without a proper home. We are the only G7 country that can't house its head of government to a sufficient standard. It's beyond embarrassing.
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Although the decline of 24 Sussex is a multi-generational failure politically, it is Carney who is now the orphan of that defeat, forced to shack up in a modest house next to his head of state's more salubrious digs. Adding insult to injury, the prime minister is also in temporary accommodation on Parliament Hill until the renovations to Centre Block are complete. Meet Mark Carney, the living-out- of-his-suitcase prime minister.
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For a man of Carney's refined taste, it must feel like a step down, even though the boy from Fort Smith would never say so. But the truth is his current house isn't even as nice as the West Hampstead terrace home he lived in as Bank of England governor. Why not, then, have a quiet word with Mary Simon, the Governor General, about a house swap?
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That's right: it's time to boot the GG out of Rideau Hall. The prime minister needs a residence; the government needs some function space; and his office needs a home in the parliamentary off-season. Why not kill all birds with one stone?
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What's more, and with security being a perpetual concern at the 24 Sussex site, we know the RCMP finds the site suitable. We know it is more easily defended, despite the 2020 episode which saw a military reservist escape detection for 13 minutes after ramming down the gates of Rideau Hall with his pickup truck. If the Canadian Forces ever get a working helicopter, it could even accommodate that kind of prime ministerial ingress and egress.
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