I agree that Canada tends to have low standards and Halifax is particularly bad for applying utilitarian standards to exceptional heritage buildings. It's pretty common to see debates over whether or not to allow a condo developer to gut a 200 year old building, even national heritage sites. In most wealthy countries such sites would be very carefully preserved. The number of buildings like this is so small that preserving them well is not an expensive proposition for the city, province, or country as a whole.
How many 5 storey Victorian office buildings are there in all of Canada? Maybe in the hundreds?
Here's an old picture of that building from the NS archives:
The good news is that if one day someone wants to restore the building it's still possible without much reconstruction. Based on how things have evolved over the past 20 years I think standards probably will continue to improve.