Category: Chairman’s Desk

Let’s thank U.S. President Donald Trump for one thing. As Ottawa launches a national competition to restore 24 Sussex Drive, the White House renovations are a lesson in what not to do. A master class, really.

Trump is building to glorify himself. The “goldening” of the Oval Office, the transformation of the Rose Garden into a Mar-a-Lago-style patio designed to please one man alone. Canada’s plan, by contrast, is to build in the national interest.

The new home of Canada’s prime ministers should be dignified, inspiring, and equal to this moment. This is a generational opportunity to build a residence by Canadians, for Canadians. That it comes at a time when our sovereignty is under threat from a hostile neighbour is not incidental. It is the point.

While minds seem set on rehabilitating the existing property, I see things differently. The residence has been sitting vacant for 10 years. The best thing you can say about the place is that they’ve gotten rid of the asbestos, mould, and rodents. Any renovation is going to creep closer to a major construction project.

So let’s start fresh — tear down what stands and build a new home from the ground up.

Naysayers might retort that you’d never tear down the White House or 10 Downing Street. But these aren’t apples-to-apples comparisons. Americans are rightly aghast at Trump’s destruction of the East Wing because it was purpose-built for the nation. The house at 24 Sussex has a different history — not as long or storied as many assume.

Think of Wilfrid Laurier and William Lyon Mackenzie King — giants from our history books who lived somewhere else entirely, at Laurier House in Sandy Hill. Laurier, who once imagined this country as a great cathedral — “I want the marble to remain the marble; the granite to remain the granite; the oak to remain the oak; and out of these elements, I would build a nation great among the nations of the world” — never set foot in 24 Sussex as prime minister. Because 24 Sussex was built in the 1860s as a private residence, a wedding gift from a logging baron for his new bride.

In the 1940s, the federal government expropriated the riverfront property — then couldn’t decide what to do with it. The house slowly degraded in limbo. (Sound familiar?) Finally, in 1950, work began to strip it down to the studs. It was renovated, remodelled, redecorated. The final product would have been unrecognizable to the logging baron and his wife.

Only 10 prime ministers have called 24 Sussex home, from Louis St. Laurent to Stephen Harper. Guests in the later years noticed plastic film on the windows, a sad attempt to keep out the winter draft. The cold crept in anyway.

Ask young Canadians to picture the prime minister’s home and they’ll likely recall Justin Trudeau giving COVID-19 updates in front of Rideau Cottage. The world has moved on.

The property itself, though, is something else entirely. There is no need to change the address. Two hectares overlooking the Ottawa River and the Gatineau Hills, where the landscape opens up and the country itself seems to breathe. Moshe Safdie, the celebrated architect who will chair the jury for the new design competition, called it precisely right: “It’s an extraordinary site with extraordinary potential. Something wonderful can be developed here.” With the right design, this can be a home worthy of the office it serves — and of the nation that office represents.

A few guidelines: the new 24 Sussex must meet modern needs, including a security perimeter and generous reception capacity. The ground floor should be public space, open for tours, showcasing Canadian art and design. The upper floor should be the prime minister’s living quarters — reconfigurable to suit different families.

Canada’s architects are ready. Pressuring them to work within the confines of an existing 19th-century structure would be a dead weight on their imaginations. Cast it away. Consider what happens when someone like Hariri Pontarini is set free: gems like the Tom Patterson Theatre in Stratford and Casey House in Toronto emerge — buildings that feel both rooted in this country and alive to its possibilities.

Getting this right will bolster national pride at a moment when we are seeking to redefine ourselves in a new world order. Renovation is a compromise with the wrong priorities. Build a new home that showcases a new Canada — one that is, as our anthem has always promised us, strong and free.

Graduates crossing the stage this June will be met with hugs, high-fives and a whole lot of hand-wringing.

Much ink has been spilled over their uncertain future. The caricature looks something like this: a generation hunched over their phones, doom-scrolling past stories of rising global temperatures and falling employment prospects. Their degrees hanging in their parents’ house, because they can’t afford one themselves.

But spend an afternoon with an actual graduating class and the gap between this dominant narrative and the people in front of you is striking. On Friday, I celebrated as 800 young people received their degrees from OCAD University, where I serve as chancellor. On that day, I shook hands with the future.

The path they follow won’t be linear. Because it’ll be better than that. Exciting. Surprising. Rewarding. Guaranteed. But not linear.

No ordinary generation

What the consensus view gets wrong is that this is no ordinary generation. These students were just weeks into their university studies when ChatGPT publicly launched, in November 2022. If anyone has seen things change fast and learned to adapt, it’s them.

Furthermore, they’ve never taken stability for granted. After all, Donald Trump has been the U.S. president for one-quarter of their lives. Piling our own fears and anxieties about the future onto these young people is not only tone-deaf, but actively harmful and tremendously unfair.

A trend that emerged over this spring’s convocation season is illustrative. Across the United States, graduating students booed guest speakers who took the stage and opined about the transformative power of artificial intelligence.

In one viral video, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was jeered when he said, “It will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person and every relationship you have.”

In another ceremony, students booed the CEO of Big Machine Records, Scott Borchetta, when he told them that what they learned during their first year might already be obsolete. Borchetta doubled down: “Deal with it.”

A room of 22-year-olds refusing to nod along when a corporate leader speaks isn’t a generation that’s checked out. It’s a generation that demands to be taken seriously. It’s a generation that intends to grab the microphone.

The reason I think they’re ready is, in part, because of what I described in my own convocation address as artistic intelligence — to distinguish it from the other kind.

There are three things I want the Class of 2026 to remember about themselves as they begin this next chapter:

• First, they have a viewpoint. A position. That’s different from a machine, which does not have stakes in the world, things it needs to say, problems it needs to solve in its own life.
• Second, they are thoughtful and answerable for their choices in a way no machine ever could be.
• And third, they are growing. They will pursue careers over decades. No machine can match the cumulative wisdom that comes from the successes — and failures — of all those years.

What you’ll find is that today’s hiring managers are looking for something that can’t be machine-generated — the judgment, the process, the four years of learning to think these graduands have been fortunate to acquire.

As a country, when we actively root for our youth, it helps to dull some of the negativity they’re inevitably picking up elsewhere — in headlines about mass layoffs or crippling housing prices or media portrayals of them as lost and alone.

Our new governor general, the Rt. Hon. Louise Arbour, got the tone exactly right at her installation ceremony earlier this month when she described young Canadians as true global citizens, well-educated, climate-aware and digitally fluent.

Surprise us

“Unlike the generations before you, you have at your disposal tools that didn’t exist when your parents were born. Surprise us.”

They almost certainly will.

Importantly, Arbour offered Canadians an unflinching assessment of the current situation; the kind she has built her career on: “[Not all youth] are able to reach their full potential as they face the headwinds of inequality. In that, we are failing them. It is our shared responsibility to correct course.”

The challenges the Class of 2026 face are not imaginary, but they are not insurmountable, either. And I am tremendously bullish on them. That’s why the onus is on us to set them up for success.

Then, we must get out of the way. Enough with the finger-wagging. They’ve got this.

Pride month — once just a weekend, then a week, now the whole month of June — is a chance to stop, look around, and see how far we’ve come in the last 40-plus years. In many ways, that progress is beyond the wildest hopes and dreams of those of us who were young activists all those years ago.

When I founded my firm, Navigator, 26 years ago, I had a vision. It would be, amongst other things, a place where all employees would be valued for their contributions, free from judgment the outside world might still make. This was in the days before we heard about “bringing your whole self” to work. We offered free space to Egale Canada, so they could carry out their important advocacy work from our office. Between client calls, we got on the phone with journalists to advocate for gay members of the Canadian Armed Forces to be included in stories on Remembrance Day, or gay couples to be included in Valentine’s Day coverage.

Over the years since, the North Star of genuine equality has resembled a slow, methodical, deliberate march that led inexorably to equal marriage.

And we won that battle, the fight of my life, not just because we were clever, but because the Canadian people came to see us as equal without reservation or condition.

That is a pretty remarkable thing about Canada. The LGBTQ community didn’t have to “win” equality — our fellow citizens offered it to us. They chose to extend it. Canadians rallied to our cause because we are a people of the Charter — equal is equal, and a threat to any Charter protection is a threat to every one of us.

And so, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised but I was to the reaction of people, including those in my own office, to the runaway success of “Heated Rivalry” this year.

It meant so much to me to hear people at our communal lunch table dissecting the plot points and character development, genuinely committed to the romance between two male hockey players.

And it just got better. “Heated Rivalry” has scored a record 16 wins at the Canadian Screen Awards. “It’s like this gay, beautiful juggernaut,” Hudson Williams said after winning for best lead actor in a drama.

Let’s recall that not so long ago, a young actor would have run screaming from a role in which he is intimate with another man, worrying it would tarnish his reputation rather than build it.

But in 2026, Williams and his co-star Connor Storrie have shot to mainstream stardom. There they are, dressed to impress, at the Met Gala and telling jokes on Saturday Night Live. Prime Minister Mark Carney grinned ear-to-ear when he posed with Williams at a Canadian film industry gala in January.

Still, progress is uneven and incomplete. Since his star turn, Williams says he’s heard from active players in the NHL, NFL and the NBA who have reached out to share how they are still concealing their sexual orientation. Think about that: elite professional athletes — among the most wealthy and well-connected people in our society — still feel they cannot be themselves.

We know, too, that LGBTQ youth in Canada are still at a higher risk for mental health issues like depression and anxiety than their straight peers.

So, we can’t rest on our laurels. Indeed, we have seen those who are trying to roll back the progress we have made in exchange for cheap political points. The leader of this parade is, of course, U.S. President Donald Trump. But he is not alone, merely the ringleader. Pushback is something to be fiercely resisted.

The words of transgender activist Janet Mock — a writer and director who has built her career on living publicly and authentically — come to mind.

“I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act.”

We cannot let Canadians forget why we raise the rainbow flag — because it represents people they love. Friends and neighbours and community leaders. The flag shows the LGBTQ community that we aren’t just tolerated, we’re included. Our stories have been heard.

Now we must keep retelling them.

There is nothing small about Alberta. It is a towering place, of mountain peaks and prairie sky. It is a powerhouse of energy and agriculture and business. Just for good measure, it also throws the country’s most famous party every July.

So why, in such a bold place, is a Captain Canada MIA? I refer, of course, to how quiet federalists have been in recent months, as a faction in the province agitates for independence.

We know something about referendums in this country. In 1995, Quebec came within a whisper of leaving. A one-point gap separated “Oui” and “Non.”

It was Jean Charest, then the national leader of the Progressive Conservatives, who got the federalists over the line. He went out and made the case for Canada, delivering impassioned speeches across the province. There was fire in his belly. He pulled his Canadian passport from his jacket pocket and waved it with pride at rallies.

The messenger matters

Canada is whole thanks to him. So, we know messengers matter.

This brings us to the big question. Who will be the voice for federalism in Alberta? Who will wrap themselves in the flag and champion unity with conviction and gravitas? There is one person who has the chops and the most to gain from taking on this role. I’m looking at you, Jason Kenney.

Timing is everything in politics. It’s been nearly four years since Kenney resigned as premier of Alberta, beset by a collapse in his approval ratings and opponents who smelled blood. (Lately, serving as premier of Alberta has been a thankless job. Not since Ralph Klein has someone won a second term.) Kenney’s had time to reflect. To rally.

If there’s anything worth returning to centre stage for, it’s the future of the country.

Kenney has lived nearly his entire life in Canada’s four Western provinces and calls Alberta home. In his 20s, he began his career as an anti-tax crusader with the nascent Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

You’ve probably heard of it. That’s because he turned it into one of the most successful advocacy groups in the country. During this time, he also happened to get on a first-name basis with many of the same folks who are now out there preaching the Alberta First gospel.

Make no mistake. Knowing your opponents is the first step in triumphing over them.

As a Member of Parliament and later as an influential cabinet minister under Stephen Harper, Kenney was everywhere, all at once. He is hyper-competent. He suffers no fools. He offers clear-eyed assessments.

Then, let’s recall how effective Kenney was in 2016, when he set out to unite the right in Alberta. He drove back and forth across the province in a blue Dodge Ram, visiting all 87 constituencies. He won the UCP leadership, then a majority government in 2019. This is someone who knows how to build a movement. He knows how to reach people.

A challenge Kenney can rise to

If Kenney and his truck were to hit the road again this summer, not all voters would be thrilled to see him. But that’s a challenge he can rise to. Kenney has a bone-deep understanding of what’s shifting in Alberta. He’s been on the receiving end of it. And we learn more from our losses than our wins.

In an interesting twist, Kenney’s more social conservative views — which have put him at odds with Canadian public opinion over the years — play okay in rural Alberta. They take a backseat anyway when the question is simply, “Should Alberta remain a province of Canada?”

Like I said, timing is everything and the time is now. Danielle Smith’s referendum on whether to have a referendum is set for Oct. 19. The separatist forces have been preparing for this. They’ve assembled volunteers and circulated white papers. They’re also, shamefully, aided by the possession of the personal data of 2.9 million electors in the province.

Where Kenney has always shone, where no one can touch him, is when he’s campaigning. He’s a pro. He can speak to anyone — including frustrated federalists — and turn out votes. So, my message to the messenger is this: You have a next act in you and it will be your most important yet.

The red Chanel dress that Nicole Kidman wore to this year’s Met Gala took a team of artisans 800 hours to make. It took about eight seconds for a chorus of critics to line up and decry the entire evening as obscene.

I see things differently.

Make no mistake: Jeff Bezos buying his way into fashion’s biggest night is a particular kind of provocation right now. It comes on the heels of his Venice wedding. His wife’s 10-minute joyride to space. All this while ordinary people are watching their grocery bills rise faster than their paycheques. The protests that sprung up in New York to draw attention to the gap between Bezos’s lifestyle and the lives of his Amazon employees were compelling.

But the case against the Met Gala — and against the broader culture of big-money philanthropy it stands for — collapses the moment you examine it seriously.

This is not abstract for me. I am alive because of philanthropy. The treatments that helped me to beat cancer were funded, in meaningful part, by people whose cheques cleared long before I needed them. So, when the same impulse that equips a cancer ward with the latest technology gets dismissed as vanity because some of it shows up on a red carpet, I take it personally.

We do not get to celebrate the philanthropy that feels noble and mock the philanthropy that feels frivolous. Same world. Same donors. The same impulse to put a name on something that lasts.

We like to imagine that art transcends money. It doesn’t. It just depends on it quietly.

The Met Gala runs on the model that built the Sistine Chapel. The Medici, the Sforzas, a string of popes — wealthy families and powerful institutions paid artists to make beautiful things in exchange for prestige and the cultural immortality of a name on a masterpiece. Botticelli had a sponsor. Leonardo had a sponsor. Michelangelo had a very demanding sponsor with a chapel ceiling to fill.

It’s worth noting the critics of those patrons said precisely what the critics of the Met Gala say now: What vanity! What excess!

Five centuries on, Bezos ponies up a reported $10 million (U.S.) to sponsor the Met Gala. The Costume Institute has a record-breaking night. And then a world-class exhibit opens that more than a million people will visit. (The same cannot be said of his superyacht.)

The alternative here isn’t a more just world. It’s a less beautiful one. Because the gowns at the Met Gala are art. Wearable sculpture. The snobbery cuts both ways — painting gets reverence, fashion gets eye-rolls — even though fashion is the most democratic art form we have. It touches every life and encodes every culture. The Met Gala is, every year, an argument that fashion belongs in the same conversation as Botticelli. And it is the visible end of a culture of private giving that steps in when the public purse is empty.

In my role as the Chancellor of OCAD University, I see firsthand that our cultural institutions are operating in a far harder environment than a generation ago. Endowments are smaller. Operating grants are flat or shrinking in real terms. And government, at every level, is wrestling with socio-economic pressures and growing uncertainty. If we want our cultural institutions to keep their doors open and their collections growing, we need more wealthy Canadians showing up, not fewer. We need them on boards. We need them at galas. We need their names on hospital wings, and scholarships, and research labs.

Some Canadians may find this a tough pill to swallow. This country has never made up its mind about the wealthy. We are uncomfortable with their existence and uncomfortable with their absence. We tax their toys, we lecture them at budget time, and then we are quietly relieved when they cover the gap between what our public institutions need and what our public budgets are willing to provide.

Philanthropy is not a betrayal of the public good. It is how the public good gets built when the public purse is stretched.

Spectacle, properly directed, is one of the oldest tools we have for funding the things worth keeping.

Use it. Don’t sneer at it.