In a Spark Advocacy survey in May (10th to 14th, 3450 interviews, nationwide online) of this year, we asked the following question about the idea of allowing private donations to fund renovations to 24 Sussex.

“For the last 10 years or so, the home that the Prime Minister used to occupy, known as 24 Sussex, has been unoccupied. It needs a lot of repairs and upgrades, including to security systems. The estimated cost to bring 24 Sussex up to the standard to house a Canadian Prime Minister including to host visitors, is potentially $50 Million. If there were private donors willing to fund these renovations, so there was no cost to the taxpayer, would you strongly support, support, be willing to go along with, oppose or strongly oppose letting people donate money to this project. The house would remain the property of the government of Canada.”

At that time, 50% said they would support this approach, another 32% would be willing to go along with it, and 17% said they opposed this idea.

There were only modest differences among partisans on this question. Conservative voters were somewhat more likely to oppose it (31%) - but most indicated they would be comfortable with this approach.

If there were an option for individual Canadians to donate a sum (we used $24 dollars and a tax receipt) to support this project, 27% said they would be certain or very likely to, and another 33% said they might or might not make such a donation. Those under 30 were the most likely to consider making a donation.

My take - based on these results - is that the approach announced by PM Carney will experience some, but pretty limited opposition.

Obviously there are more details in the future that people will have an opportunity to learn about and react to, but Canadians are likely to appreciate the recovery of this landmark and the involvement of private donations as part of the process. A not insignificant number might also donate themselves.