Today, I look at two further areas of interest from the Auditor General’s report: the insights it provides about the relocation of the Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place, and the continued environmental destruction that we might expect to see taking place at Ontario Place.
Planning continues for relocation of Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place
Even if the Auditor General’s office has questioned the value-for-money proposition of the relocation of the Ontario Science Centre—both in its 2023 and now its 2024 report—plans are continuing apace to move the storied institution to a half-sized new facility at Ontario Place.
The new price tag of over $700 million for a new Science Centre includes an underground loading zone. To meet functional requirements for the Science Centre, this will likely be a two-storey underground space that also accommodates a bus loop, as well as car drop-off, bus entry, and shipping/receiving for Therme.
The report notes that there was only a single bidder on the $5 million contract for a planning, design, and compliance consultant for the new Science Centre—WZMH Architects is the consultant that was selected for this work. Their Output Specifications document is expected to be completed “by early 2025,” and the RFP planned to be released to up to three vendors in January 2025, delayed from the original projected date in the RFQ of Fall 2024.
While the government has stated in the past that a new Science Centre at Ontario Place would open “as early as 2028,” it has now told the Auditor General that the new building is expected to open in 2029. The RFP for a temporary location suggests that a new Science Centre would not be ready until as late as 2034.
That temporary location for the Ontario Science, which the government had promised to secure quickly, has not been publicly announced, although a memo to Science Centre employees indicated that it may be selecting a conference facility in Mississauga. Meanwhile, the presence of the Science Centre is currently limited to temporary pop-ups at Harbourfront Centre and Sherway Gardens.
The Auditor General evidently sought to find out how much the closure of the Ontario Science Centre cost the public coffer but was refused access to this information. This withholding of information was clearly against protocol, prompting the Auditor General to issue a reminder to the government that “as independent auditors, we require access to all information that could have an impact on our financial statement audit.”
While the Auditor General came short of stating that renewing the legacy location of the Ontario Science Centre would represent better value-for-money than relocating it to Ontario Place, the ballooning costs for a new Science Centre supports this conclusion. Moreover, the fact that key financial information about the closure was withheld from the Auditor General’s office strongly suggests that the unjustified closure was more expensive than anticipated—making the unpopular closure and relocation an even worse proposition to taxpayers.
Continued environmental destruction at Ontario Place
As of October 2024, the report notes, 1,491 trees have been removed from Ontario Place. The Province is planning to remove an additional 298 trees, for a total of 1,789 trees. “Only 149 trees (or 8% of the original tree inventory at Ontario Place) will be conserved on the site,” the report notes. A 2022 arborist report prepared for Infrastructure Ontario had anticipated that while the Therme project would entail the removal of all trees on the West Island, 25% of the overall trees at Ontario Place would be protected.
Most of the Auditor General’s recommendations were accepted by the government, but these largely consisted of pledges to improve of procurement practices in the future. The government rejected the sole recommendation concerning the current Ontario Place project—a recommendation that it implements mitigation measure identified in a draft 2023 Heritage Impact Assessment report. In its response, the Ministry of Infrastructure curtly “notes the site is exempt from the Ontario Heritage Act.”
The recommendations of the draft 2023 Heritage Impact Assessment report seem to be relatively modest in the scope of a $2.2 billion project, but based on the government’s response, we should not expect to see them implemented by matter of course. Those recommendations were as follows:
This series will continue with two more parts, looking at the Call for Development process and the possibility for future, continued privatization plans at Ontario Place.
Related:
The Auditor General’s Report, Part 1: The cost of privatizing Ontario Place
The Auditor General’s Report, Part 2: The billion dollar question of parking
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