Ontario Premier Doug Ford is expected to provide an update on the closure of Ontario’s Science Centre, a day after he defended the government’s decision to shut it down and labelled the building as old and decrepit.
Ford announced on Wednesday that the original engineering report has been peer-reviewed, and officials will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. to discuss those details.
The premier said it would be “foolish” to repair the Ontario Science Centre instead of shutting it down entirely due to what the government has called structural issues with the roof, among other problems.
“You’ll fall off your chair when you see all the issues we have down there, not just the roof,” Ford said on Wednesday.
“It’s not as simple as you just saying, ‘Go in there and throw some shingles down, and we’re all done.’ You have to listen to the technical briefing. That place is absolutely just a total mess from top to bottom, to front to back, to every single building — even the bridgeway is closed, the air conditioning is gone. It would be a foolish decision [to repair it].”
The provincial government has faced widespread criticism over the decision to shut down the science centre rather than address the problems while keeping parts of it open.
A deal last year between the city and province to have Ontario take over operations of two Toronto highways included a discussion of maintaining some form of science programming at the original science centre site. But Ford suggested Wednesday he was no longer supportive of that.
“It’s the city of Toronto that owns [the property], and anything they decide to do — outside of building another science centre — we’ll be there to support them,” Ford said.
With files from The Canadian Press