The National Research Council is plowing ahead with a $45.8 million makeover of an unused library in Ottawa, adding gyms, wellness lounges, prayer rooms and a cushy executive suite for its $377,500-a-year president — even as the federal government promises to free up public property for housing.Notices to contractors went out Friday, just days after Prime Minister Mark Carney ordered federal agencies to identify unused buildings for conversion into homes. Instead, the NRC is spending $2.7 million on furniture and fixtures and outfitting its new headquarters with perks for staff, including a gymnasium, “quiet rooms,” “wellness rooms,” and even an “indigenous space” with no explanation of what it will be used for.The building’s top office will go to NRC president Mitch Davies, a career bureaucrat who wrote in the agency’s annual report that “our people make big things possible.” .The tender documents didn’t specify what luxuries his new suite will include.The library, built in 1974, was deemed “under-used and under-occupied,” but instead of turning it over for badly needed housing, the NRC declared the four-storey refit would create a “modernized, hybrid work environment” that is “low carbon and climate resilient.”The Trudeau-era Liberal Party has repeatedly promised to convert vacant government properties into homes, first in its 2021 campaign platform and again in 2025, pledging to build affordable housing “at scale” on public land.This latest Ottawa renovation follows another NRC boondoggle in Mississauga, Ont., where the agency spent $77 million on a “clean energy” office complete with a rooftop sun lounge, splash pad and Brazilian walnut benches.The NRC has refused to release records detailing that project under Access To Information.
