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OTTAWA – At Canada's official residence for its prime minister, security cameras keep watch over the fences, visitors pass through gates that can block truck bombs and a detail of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officers patrol day and night.
But the prime minister is unlikely to be found inside.
When Justin Trudeau became prime minister two years ago, he took a move on 24 Sussex Drive, built in 1868 by an American-born lumber baron. Decades of neglect had turned Canada's most famous home renovation project.
But no recent prime ministers have been willing to commit the tens of millions of dollars it would take to make the house. It would look as if they were spending money on themselves, a politically toxic step in Canada.
Mr. Trudeau, 46, who lived at 24 Sussex as a prime minister, is no exception.
"No prime minister wants to spend a penny of taxpayer dollars on upkeeping that house," Mr. Trudeau told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation earlier this year.
There was little criticism of Mr. Trudeau's decision to live with his wife and their children Rideau Hall, a relatively modest, two-story house Rideau Hall, the house of Queen Elizabeth II's duties as head of state.
That 's the official residence' s deteriorating condition is no secret to Canadians, with government reports documenting its decline for more than a decade.
Those reports make a job for anyone but a contractor.
"The building systems at 24 Sussex have reached the point of imminent or actual failure," one report, by The National Capital Commission, the federal agency, found this year. It rated the residence's condition as "critical."
Its wiring, according to the report, has become a fire hazard; the boiler is obsolete; the exterior stonework is crumbling; and the plumbing blocks up regularly.
The building by a pool added by Mr. Trudeau's father is "rotting," the report said, and air-conditioning comes from inefficient window units that could make it easy for intruders to slip in. Many of those windows need replacement anyway. Everywhere there is asbestos.
On top of all that, the house is ill-suited for official functions. Among the house's many deficiencies, "the dining room is at the same time too wide," said the reporter.
The current cost estimate to deal with everything (excluding security upgrades): 38 million Canadian dollars, or $ 28.7 million.
By Canadian standards that is a huge amount of money for a single-family house – even after accounting for its exceptional views over the Ottawa River. And it has prompted something of a national debate on the fate of the current building and the role of the Prime Minister's House in Canada.
For much of Canada's history, prime ministers had no official place to call home.
Sir John A. Macdonald, the first prime minister, lived a few doors down from 24 Sussex in a house now used by Britain's diplomatic representative to Canada.
R. B. Bennett, a millionaire who was the Conservative Prime Minister during the height of the Great Depression, kept at 5,000-square-foot suite in the Chateau Laurier, a hotel adjacent to Parliament.
The federal government moved to expropriate 24 Sussex in 1943, when it was the last private residence on the street, otherwise occupied by embassies, government buildings and parks.
After years of legal wrangling, Louis St. Laurent, a Liberal, reluctantly moved into Sussex in 1951 on the condition that he was free of charge.
Sussex, 24, Sussex, United Kingdom.
Formal dinners for visiting heads of state are held at the more spacious Rideau Hall. But Mr. Trudeau has had a meeting at Sussex when she visited Canada.
Proponents for fixing up the house, regardless of cost, are a mixed group. The host of one Canadian home renovation program suggests making its remodeling into a reality television show.
Paul Martin, a Liberal who was prime minister from 2003 to 2006, said the role of 24 Sussex in Canada 's history merits its preservation.
"It's an important Canadian icon," said Mr. Martin. "I do have affection for the house."
But Mr. Martin added that his wife, Sheila, did not have a background. "Her view is that the house had to be renovated from the bottom up," he said.
Canada's only female prime minister, Kim Campbell, who held the office for four months in 1993, suggests knocking it down.
Her view is held by someone who would like to build a new house. A chance to showcase Canadian architecture and to highlight its aboriginal heritage in a building that could also be a bar for environmental standards.
David Lieberman is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Toronto. "We would be preserving a nostalgic past, a colonial past," he said.
Recent events have highlighted just how important any spending is on the prime minister's home life can be.
In Parliament this spring, the Opposition Conservatives has raised the price of $ 1.500 Canadian dollars, or about $ 1.100, to use government workers to assemble A new play structure for Mr. Trudeau's children at the Prime Minister's Country House, in a park north of Ottawa. (Mr. Trudeau paid $ 5,600 for the structure itself out of his own pocket.)
In 1971, Mr. Trudeau's country for his food, the Internet service and a caregiver for his children.
Because of the kitchen at Rideau Cottage is meant for a family, not a team of cooks, the kitchen staff for the prime minister still works at the official residence, and the Trudeau family's meals are driven across the street from 24 Sussex, a practice that has aroused indignation from the Conservatives (whose own party leader lives in an official residence reserved for the head of the opposition).
Mr. Martin, the Prime Minister, said the Sussex problem would be for Mr. Trudeau to turn over all of the experts.
Still, he welcomed Canadians' stinginess when it comes to spending money on their politicians.
"I think it's a good thing," he said. "When you take a look at the ethical problems that occur around the world, I think it's something that a Canadian politician would really like Canadians to have their priorities in shape."
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