One of the things that makes covering the Ford government reasonably straightforward is that, however byzantine the scandals get (see Greenbelt, 2022-23), the plain facts are often bad enough on their own to merit criticism, derision, disgust, or all three.
So while we can delve into the details of what the engineering report released by Infrastructure Ontario late Friday does and does not say, the incontrovertible headline here is that, for a small fraction of what the Ford government has decided to spend building a parking structure at Ontario Place, it could repair the roof at the Ontario Science Centre — and it’s choosing not to.
There’s more to say, of course, but that really ought to be enough. Indeed, the extent to which this benighted parking structure at Ontario Place is driving policy here is difficult to overstate. Therme, the company building the post–Ontario Place spa, demanded the parking lot as part of its contract with the province. (Some lemon socialism at work here: despite having free waterfront land in the deal, Therme was still able to extract this massive subsidy as well.) Last year, the auditor general found that the parking lot is itself driving the decision to move the science centre to Ontario Place: plunking the new science centre on top of a “site-wide parking solution” will help the government meet its obligation to Therme, while hopefully generating more traffic to amortize the costs of this white elephant.
Honesty compels us to note what else that auditor general report found: that years of underfunding the science centre by successive governments had left a maintenance and repair backlog of $370 million. (Astonishingly, even this sum isn’t much more than the estimated $307 million for the Ontario Place parking lot.) That’s not all on Doug Ford, but the immediate decision to close the science centre because of needed roof repairs absolutely is: less than 5 per cent of the building is in critical condition even according to the engineer’s report, and the cost of replacing the concrete roof panels with steel ones would absolutely not break the provincial bank.
It might not be the most damning detail illuminated by Elsa Lam at Canadian Architect, but it dropped my jaw: the Imax theatre at the science centre is totally unaffected by the roof defects, as they’re covered by a totally different roof system. Yet it’s just as closed as the rest of the facility. For a province where efficiency in the provincial public sector is a perennial topic, it’s hard to imagine something more profligate and wasteful than tossing away a fully functional Imax theatre like it was used Kleenex.
The premier and his cabinet have apparently decided to cut their losses at the science centre, and, at the moment, there’s little sign of their changing their mind on that. The threat now is that, once emptied of its current exhibits, the structure will be allowed to decay even further and that winter will indeed collapse some of the impugned sections of roof. The government could then say that the rotting, derelict structure needed to be demolished in its entirety.
There is an alternative. Toronto city council is set to debate a motion Wednesday asking city staff to report back on the financial implications of the city’s taking over the operations of the science centre. The city and the Toronto Region Conservation Authority already own the land, while the province owns the structure and has a 99-year lease with the city.
The answer here is simple: the province wants the science centre off its books, and the city wants to save it. Even if the province doesn’t intend to use the science centre anymore, it could give the structures to the city (or sell them for a nominal fee for legal and accounting purposes) and let the city deal with them.
The risk to the province would be minimal. The worst-case scenario for the public would be that the city failed the science centre no more or less than the Ford government already has. But potential for upsides abound, if the government can just rid itself of its obsession with maximizing the returns for a lakefront spa and parking lot (or is it parking lot and associated spa?).
It probably doesn’t need to be said that these events have raised the salience of this government’s questionable negotiations with Therme at exactly the moment it’s trying to plan an early spring election. If the science centre’s roof collapses over the winter, Ford’s critics will have graphic, visual evidence of the Progressive Conservative party’s priorities going into the next election. (Are you looking forward to amateur drone photographers posting photos to social media? I am.) And if the roof survives, his critics will be able to say that the science centre was hastily abandoned for nothing. Ford is facing a political lose-lose.
The way to avoid the political problem is to do the right thing or, at the very least, to let someone else do it. Either save the science centre or let the city do it — because right now, there’s nothing but avoidable pain ahead.
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