Carney Announces Design Competition for 24 Sussex, Promises Building Will Have Walls
Prime Minister Mark Carney is reportedly set to announce a fundraising campaign and design competition to restore 24 Sussex Drive, the official prime ministerial residence that has been uninhabitable for so long that successive PMs have treated it less like a home and more like an embarrassing relative kept in the attic.
The building has sat empty since 2015, beset by asbestos, rodents, and the lingering shame of a country that cannot seem to maintain a single four-bedroom house on a riverbank. The design competition will invite Canada's best architects to imagine a residence worthy of the office, on a budget that will almost certainly be described, at some future news conference, as 'higher than anticipated.'
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, King Charles has quietly announced he will not actually live in Buckingham Palace after its £369-million renovation, which works out to roughly one fully restored 24 Sussex per bathroom. Sources confirm the King prefers Clarence House, a smaller residence he finds 'cozier,' a sentiment Canadian prime ministers have expressed about every rental property in Rockcliffe Park for the past decade.
The winning 24 Sussex design is expected to be unveiled, debated, value-engineered into a Tim Hortons, and then quietly shelved in time for the next election. Carney himself is not expected to move in. No one is. That is, increasingly, the point of the house.