The invasion of the bees — and other lingering costs of running 24 Sussex
Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: October 12, 2018
Bees invaded 24 Sussex Drive this year. So did a bat and some wasps, and the property has a big ash tree just inviting emerald ash borer to lunch.
What’s a property manager to do?
Call the pest-control company, of course. Pest control — both for “urgent” calls and regular monthly prevention — is close to a $10,000 expense this year at the official residence that currently has no prime minister living in it.
An even bigger expense is maintaining the indoor pool.
These and other costs kept the National Capital Commission busy, generating pages of bills newly released under an access-to-information request. The bills offer a glimpse of the day-to-day operating costs. (They’re separate from the massive renovation work the building needs.)
Reading them is a little like snooping through your neighbour’s MasterCard statement, except that this is, after all, your money. Let’s take a look.
• Pest control
Pest control is usually a low-level expense. Both the main house and the RCMP station are treated monthly.
But this year came the honey bees, which established a colony on the grounds. It cost $8,050 to get rid of them back in May.
Other pest incursions were a lot cheaper to deal with. A contractor shooed away the bat in the basement for a mere $75; and the NCC spent $125 to get rid of a wasp’s nest. The wasps were up under a soffit, which is pretty usual for wasps, and most of the time you can just leave them alone until the winter kills them. Anyway, that nest is gone.
Emerald ash borer is a serious threat to the trees that once lined many Ottawa streets. The NCC is protecting one ash at 24 Sussex by paying to inject Tree-Azin, which kills ash borers when they try to reproduce under the bark. Cost: $756. The treatment has to be repeated every year or two.
• The pool
The pool installed by Pierre Trudeau back in 1975 is also costing a lot lately, and this is on top of the cost of bringing in an engineer to analyze harmful mould. The mould is typical of indoor heated pool buildings and it turned out not to be too serious, but the cost of removing mouldy material was established in 2016 at more than $20,000;
There was also a new diving board installed two years ago, for $5,695.
This year, the maintenance costs continued. One big item was $6,000 for sanding the wooden pool deck.
Then came a lot of regular expenses. Weekly cleaning (described elsewhere as “maintenance”) cost Canada $8,830 in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2018.
The pool also needed a new salt cell ($700), new filters ($809), pump repair ($125) and a separate amount of cleaning for $689 that includes annual cleaning of cartridges.
A new leaf skimmer mas a mere $29.95.
Add up the deck sanding, weekly maintenance and other purchases and the total to keep the pool running for one fiscal year comes to a little more than $17,000.
NCC spokesman Jean Wolfe noted, “The prime minister’s family makes regular use of the swimming pool, which is located in a separate building at 24 Sussex. As such, there is a contract for regular maintenance of the swimming pool, as has been the case for years.”
He said maintenance costs for the overall property “are in line with previous years.”
“While the prime minister and his family do not currently live at 24 Sussex, the buildings continue to be essential to the operations of the household staff and RCMP security detail and are used 365 days a year.”
• Hydro
$78,363 for the year. This is the combined bill for five buildings on the property.
• Gas
$12,552 for the year.
• Water
$2,197.
• Roof repairs
$1,313. That’s low as roofing jobs go, indicating that the major roof replacement of 1998 is holding up well.
• Art: (Yes, art.)
“Packing and transportation services for artwork,” a reference to moving an unidentified part of the “Crown collection” of art, cost $3,780. The NCC says this collection includes “the outstanding pieces of fine and decorative art used to furnish and adorn the interiors of Canada’s official residences. It consists of about 4,000 artifacts.”
• And finally, the NCC spent $240 on pest control for the east and west guard huts. Whatever security threats the guards may face, at least they won’t have mice.
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. How much of this is conservative politicking vs. actual concern is yet to be determined....
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