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The more practical of these questions include: Will the building be made more accessible to the disabled? Will it will be more family- and women-friendly and environmentally sustainable? Will current public and media access be protected or even enhanced?

And there are more challenging questions, which I acknowledge might sound like heresy. For example, do we even want the House of Commons to be configured the same way when the MPs get back? Has anyone ever considered whether other designs, such as the horseshoe shape used in Australia and Scotland, might work better?

Meanwhile, the public has been largely absent from the conversation — a curious fact in an age when governments are worried about alienating citizens.

The plan, for now, is for crews to get inside the building and then to conduct an “investigative program” involving opening walls, ceilings and floors to get a picture of the condition of the place. Of course, since the building is a designated historic space, much will need to be protected.

Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), the official custodian of the parliamentary buildings, told me that the project is “in the initial stages of schematic design.” Decisions on such things as the design of the House of Commons and the Senate, and what spaces will be set aside for the media, have not yet been made.

The public has been largely absent from the conversation — a curious fact in an age when governments are worried about alienating citizens.

Liberal MP Larry Bagnell, chair of the Procedure and House Affairs Committee (PROC), raised the lack of consultation over the Centre Block renovation during a committee meeting in 2016. He worried that committee spaces might disappear in Centre Block, and noted that even though he’s been on the Hill since 2004, he hadn’t been asked for his opinion on the new design of the West Block chamber.