The federal department responsible for billions of dollars in renovation and reconstruction of Parliament Hill’s aging buildings has launched a plan to raze old buildings across Ottawa’s Wellington St. directly in front of the Peace Tower to create yet more new spaces for MP offices and parliamentary committee rooms.

An advance procurement notice published on the Public Services and Procurement Canada site last week says the new construction and demolition works — on one of three city blocks whose properties were expropriated by the federal government nearly 50 years ago — are crucial for successful renovation of the Hill’s Centre Block and other buildings under repair in the Parliamentary precinct.

PSPC told iPolitics the new project is also being planned to create the added space and buildings that will be required as the number of Members of Parliament increase over the coming years due to electoral district redistribution following census counts of a growing population.

The online notice has had more than 1,000 page views in the past 10 days.

But some MPs, including two who sit on the internal governing board of the House of Commons, were unaware Wednesday of the latest step in a Parliamentary construction cycle that began when Parliament Hill’s West Block renovations began in 2011.

The West Block overhaul, whose cost has been pegged at just under $1 billion, was required to not only to refurbish and reconstruct one of the two original government buildings on Parliament Hill but also to provide a swing space for the House of Commons as desperately needed renovations and reconstruction of the 100-year-old Centre Block neared.

The department says newly proposed construction and demolition on Block 2, the public works designation for the middle of three city blocks in front of Parliament whose commercial buildings were expropriated in 1973, would not begin for several years.

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