Scarborough rally held to keep Ontario Science Centre in place

As the province stays adamant on its decision to move the Ontario Science Centre from Toronto's Don Mills neighbourhood to Ontario Place, people who live nearby are rallying to keep it near neighbourhoods they say lack access to the city's major institutions.

On Sunday, Scarborough Southwest NDP MPP Doly Begum organized a rally in Toronto's east end, where dozens showed up in the rain to call on the provincial government to reverse its decision to move the science centre.

Begum's electoral district is right next to the Don Mills neighbourhood where the centre is located. 

Begum said the government's plan to move the science centre will make it harder for people in Scarborough to access the educational institution. She says the government isn't listening to the people.

"What I'm hearing from across the city, from across the province, people are not happy with this decision," she said.

"Do we have a lot of places like the Science Centre to go to? No," she said. "When we have something good, something so precious, like the science centre, why is the government deciding to close it?"

Premier Doug Ford's government plans to move the science centre from its current location to Ontario Place in downtown Toronto. The new location would be next to a planned spa being built by Austrian company Therme, an expanded Live Nation concert venue, as well as new public space and beaches. Under those plans, the science centre building won't open up until 2028.

In a statement Monday, Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma said the new site will offer "a new, world-class facility" for the science centre, she said, with 15 per cent more exhibition space. She said the old building would have to be repaired to stay in place, at an estimated cost of close to half a billion dollars.

Zahireen Tarefdar, who grew up near the science centre, told the crowd Sunday that children who live outside the city's downtown will be the ones who lose out if the centre moves. Growing up in a low-income neighbourhood, she said, the science centre offered her and other kids in the area educational opportunities they wouldn't have had otherwise.

"The children across Scarborough deserve better."

MPP Begum called on the government to put money toward repairing the old location instead of moving it.

The premier said in July that repairing the building would be "foolish," calling it a "total mess from top to bottom."

Architect says repairs possible, move unnecessary 

The government abruptly shut down the science centre in June, following an engineering report that found parts of the roof were in critical condition and could collapse under heavy precipitation.

The findings in that report have been contested by the architectural firm that designed the building, which opened in 1969.

Brian Rudy of Moriyama Teshima Architects expressed those opinions at Sunday's rally. 

"We could go in there tomorrow and fix the areas of the roof that are supposedly problematic and have people back in that building within a week," he said.

The government has said that would be too costly, and the move would save the province $250 million. Rudy told the crowd Sunday the move is political, and is being used to justify private development at Ontario Place.

A business case released last year by the government found that the current building is facing $369 million in deferred and critical maintenance needs over the next 20 years.

Years of government underfunding have led the building to fall into disrepair, the province's attorney general said in a 2023 report. 

The auditor general's report also found the government made its decision to move the centre to Toronto's waterfront with "preliminary and incomplete cost information" and failed to consult key stakeholders.