Ontario's Premier Accountability Dashboard · Queen's Park Watch
Ontario Science Centre — Manufactured Closure & Ontario Place Relocation
June 21, 2024
TL;DR
Ford abruptly closed the Ontario Science Centre on June 21, 2024, citing a dangerous roof — but the engineers' own report did not recommend closure. The same roofing material exists in 400+ other Ontario buildings that remain open. The roof survived a major snowstorm intact. Ford refused to reopen it anyway. The Science Centre is now temporarily housed in a mall and at Harbourfront while a replacement is built at Ontario Place — a project whose cost has ballooned from $322 million to over $1 billion, with the new building 45% the size of the original.
Why It Matters
The closure did not happen in isolation. It was announced in the context of the Ford government's plan to relocate the Science Centre to Ontario Place — the same waterfront site at the centre of the Therme spa deal — and to demolish the original Don Mills building. The closure and relocation were announced together, suggesting the safety rationale was constructed to justify a decision that had already been made for other reasons: the Science Centre's Don Mills location needed to be vacated to facilitate the broader Ontario Place redevelopment.
The financial case for relocation collapsed on examination. The Ford government had argued that repairing and renewing the existing Science Centre would cost $478 million — more than building new. The Auditor General's December 2024 report found that this framing was misleading: the government's own business plan had projected $257 million in savings over 50 years from relocation. By the time the AG reported, relocation costs had already exceeded $400 million — more than the cost of simply repairing the roof. The numbers had inverted: the move was more expensive than the repairs it replaced.
Then came the contract. In late 2025, Ford's government awarded a $1.04 billion contract to build the new Ontario Place-based Science Centre — more than three times the original $322 million projection, and double the "over $500 million" figure cited in the Auditor General's own December 2024 report. The new building will be 45% the size of the original. Ontarians are paying three times as much for less than half the institution. The Auditor General had already found the decision-making process "not fair, transparent or accountable" — the same language used to describe the Therme lease that surrounds the new site.
The original building — designed by Raymond Moriyama and recognized as an architectural landmark — now sits empty and deteriorating at Don Mills, with demolition planned. Community groups, architects, heritage advocates, and former Science Centre staff have organized against the demolition. A year after the closure, staff described the closure as "the biggest betrayal" — abrupt, unexplained, and irreversible by the time anyone could mount a challenge.
Legal Actions
In the Auditor General's December 2024 report on Ontario Place, she found the Science Centre relocation had already cost more than the government's projected savings from the move — $400M+ spent versus $257M in anticipated 50-year savings. The report found the decision-making process was "not fair, transparent or accountable." Shortly after the AG report, the government awarded a $1.04 billion construction contract for the new Ontario Place-based Science Centre — more than three times the original $322M projection, and double the "over $500M" figure the AG herself had cited just weeks earlier. The new building will be 45% the size of the original.
Documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests and published by Canadian Architect revealed that draft engineering reports from Rimkus Consulting — the firm hired to assess the Science Centre roof — did not recommend closure. The "high-risk" RAAC panels covered less than 2.5% of the roof, concentrated in non-exhibition areas, and early draft reports recommended routine targeted repairs over the summer. The final report, released only after the closure announcement, was more alarming in tone. Texts between Infrastructure Ontario's CEO and communications staff indicated the Ministry's communications team was involved in how the engineers' findings were framed for public release — raising questions about whether political staff shaped the public safety rationale for a decision made for other reasons.
In early 2025, the Ontario Science Centre's roof — the stated reason for its permanent closure — withstood record snow loads from a major snowstorm without structural incident. Infrastructure Ontario confirmed it could not say whether the roof had been damaged. Liberal MPPs called on the government to reopen the building given the roof's demonstrated performance. Ford refused, stating the closure decision stood regardless of the roof's actual behaviour under stress. Critics noted that the government's refusal to revisit the decision, even after the stated safety risk failed to materialize, was evidence that the closure had never truly been about the roof.
Rippling Effects
While the new Science Centre is under construction — with a target opening date of 2028–2029 — Ontario's public science institution now operates as a pop-up in a former Nordstrom store at Sherway Gardens mall and a temporary display at Harbourfront Centre. This is the province's interim provision for what was one of Canada's premier science education institutions. Schools that previously relied on the Science Centre for curriculum programming have lost access to the permanent facility indefinitely.
The broader context is the Ontario Place redevelopment: the new Science Centre will occupy a fraction of the Ontario Place site, while the majority of the publicly owned waterfront is leased to Therme for a private spa — on a 95-year lease, for $1 per year, with $2.24 billion in taxpayer-funded infrastructure. The Science Centre was used to provide public-interest cover for the Ontario Place deal: a public institution embedded in a private redevelopment project, allowing the government to claim the waterfront remains publicly accessible while the dominant land use is a private luxury facility.
The demolition of the Moriyama-designed original building, if it proceeds, will be permanent. The architectural and cultural loss cannot be recovered. Heritage Ontario and architectural organizations have documented the building's significance; Moriyama himself designed it as a building that was meant to feel like science itself — layered, surprising, and organic. The replacement, by contrast, will be a fraction of the size, embedded in a commercial development, and built at a cost that has already exceeded any plausible economic justification.