Mayor Chow promised Toronto would take over the Science Centre. When?
It's right there in the deal, printed in ink.
On November 27th, 2023, Olivia Chow capitulated to Doug Ford, ceding any opposition to his plans for Ontario Place and the Ontario Science Centre. In exchange, she was promised a few things:
For one, that the province would “explore” relocating the “planned underground parking garage” from the shoreline to the Exhibition Place grounds instead. A new rendering from just last month shows the province erecting a large aboveground structure, still on the waterfront. It’s fair to say Mayor Chow got fooled on that one.
On another hand, the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway were uploaded to the province, and now those massive money sinks are taken out of the municipal budget. That solves a big financial issue, but it won’t satisfy those who wanted this freeway replaced with proper walkable streets and usable property.
But the final commitment that Mayor Chow got from Premier Ford? A “discussion” between Ontario and Toronto about future operations at the Ontario Science Centre. More specifically, the wording from the press release by the Premier’s Office says the following:
The province has also agreed…to discuss partnership opportunities with the city for maintaining public, community-oriented science programming at the legacy Ontario Science Centre.
So, as part of the “new deal” that Ford and Chow trumpeted, the city should be making plans to take occupancy of the Science Centre facility at a future date, and perform some form of “public, community-oriented science programming”, in essence turning it from the Ontario Science Centre to the Toronto Science Centre.
Cool. Awesome. I can vibe with that. Reasonable compromise for our city’s mayor to make! But there’s just one problem: that deal is from November 2023, and it is currently July 2025.
So, where is the city’s new Science Centre?
On June 21st, 2024, the Ministry of Infrastructure abruptly announced that due to an engineering report, the roof was in danger of collapsing within a few months, and thus the Science Centre would be permanently closing.
Except that didn’t happen. Again, it is July 2025, and the Science Centre has survived over a year since it was claimed to supposedly be at risk of collapsing under “significant snow or rain”.
You see, it turns out that the report was bullshit. Documents obtained by Canadian Architect through freedom of information laws indicate that the report by Rimkus Consulting Group did not support the closure. The recommendation was actually regular and routine maintenance for the next twenty years.
It appears this conclusion was changed under pressure by Doug Ford’s government, forcing Rimkus to instead issue a version of the report saying the building should be closed if repairs are impossible, despite Rimkus believing they were not only possible but routine.
This is a great example of what we call “manufacturing consent”. A false premise involving a supposed threat to public safety was created, to justify an outcome the Premier had already explicitly admitted to the public he was pursuing.
After Doug Ford manufactured the circumstances to create an “emergency” closure of the Science Centre, Toronto City Council passed a motion asking city staff to report to Mayor Chow’s Executive Committee on the feasibility of Toronto taking over full responsibility for the site.
However, city staff would claim in that July 2024 report that it “would not be sustainable” for Toronto to take over and operate the Science Centre, because it would cost $20 million dollars per year.
This is confusing on multiple levels. Firstly: that is not a large sum of money for a budget on the scale of Toronto’s size, and the city’s existing revenue generation tools can easily help the city generate the necessary funding. The claim that the city would need provincial help to fund this is, quite simply, false.
But from the bigger picture, why did Mayor Chow even agree to discuss a city takeover, if there is apparently no willingness on Toronto’s end to actually pay for it?
In that same Toronto Star article from July 2024, an Ontario Ministry of Infrastructure spokesperson said they remained committed to the discussions “for science-based programming and education.” But somewhere along the line, both the Governments of Toronto and Ontario simply stopped talking about this plan.
I reached out to Mayor Chow’s office, requesting comment on this story and asking the following questions:
What are the current state of these discussions? Is there a date when the city has agreed to take occupancy of the site? If not, how does Mayor Chow plan to pursue provincial compliance with the agreement?
Staff from Mayor Chow’s office acknowledged receipt of this request for comment, and stated that it was under review by the Mayor’s Press Secretary, Zeus Eden. However, despite acknowledging receipt, actual comment on the story was not provided by the publication deadline.
If I receive a future response, I’ll provide an update to this story. But right now, the state of affairs regarding the discussions between Toronto and Ontario is completely unknown to the public, and it is unclear whether Mayor Chow will keep her promise to return “community-oriented science programming” to the Science Centre facility.
Indeed, without any evidence to the contrary, it appears this will be another broken commitment, like the waterfront parking garage that this same “new deal” claimed could be relocated.
I’m not optimistic about whether this promise will really be kept. And I don’t think anybody else should be, either.