brianpeiris

The author is Elsa Lam -- The editor of the Canadian Architect magazine, PhD, Fellow with the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, Honorary member of the Ontario Association of Architects. She knows her stuff!

It's only a 12 minute video, so I'd recommend watching it, but here's my (kinda long) summary if you prefer reading:

• The Ontario government abruptly shutdown the Ontario Science Centre on July 21st
• They claim that engineering reports about the centre's roof require the shutdown (actually the reports do not require a complete shutdown and only call for repairs [* see my additions below])
• The closing has been controversial. Many call it a calculated political move
• The situation is intertwined with the government's plans for Ontario Place
• The Ontario Place plans display symptoms of corruption, where the government seems to have given a portion of the land to Therme Spa without a good business justification, without public consultation, and without an environmental assessment. The government then passed a law to exempt itself from environmental assessments.
• Doug Ford has connections to execs at Therme, who have connections to Ford's previous companies and staff.
• The government plans to move Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place, but it seems this move is being used to justify an expensive parking lot attached to the new science centre, but which will actually serve Therme's contract.
• The Science Centre's roof issues have been known and ignored for years.
• The roof is made of a type of concrete that is also used in hundreds of buildings in Ontario, including schools -- there has been no call to shut those down.
• The engineering reports say that the roof can be repaired by closing off those areas alone.
• The original architects say the shutdown is unnecessary and have offered their services for free.
• Multiple private donors have offered millions in funds to repair the roof
• The government's estimates for repairs are extremely inflated, so moving the centre to Ontario Place is not actually cheaper.
• The government's estimates for building a new centre at Ontario Place are significantly underestimated.
• The government's business case for moving the centre focuses on the value of the land, not the educational and cultural value of the centre
• The land will be even more valuable when the transit lines open at that location (which were meant to serve the science center)
• The government's business case suggests building housing at that location.
• The video then switches to spectulation about the motivations:
  • The science centre is owned by the province, but the land is leased by the city with the requirement that it only be used for a science centre
  • The government is painting a picture aimed to justify the shutdown.
  • They declare the building dilapidated and unsafe, which lessens the public's perception of the centre
  • They are attempting to dump the cost of the centre onto the city, knowing the city cannot afford it
  • Without repairs, the government could just wait for the roof to be further compromised with snowfall, fulfilling the government's justification
  • The government could then renegotiate the lease and use the land for housing, perhaps given to contractors who were promised land in the government's failed Greenbelt initiative
  • The whole situation reeks of backroom deals and corruption
  • Although the Ontario Place plans may have some positive benefits in the end, it does not justify the process and motivation for abruptly and permanently shutting down the Ontario Science Centre. Doug Ford has learned from his failed Greenbelt plans and is apparently attempting to force his agenda once again.

* An extensive analysis by an expert architect at Canadian Architect Magazine has also verified that the shutdown is not a safety requirement, and that the government's claimed repair costs are vastly overblown (https://www.canadianarchitect.com/the-true-cost-of-repairing-the-ontario-science-centre-is-much-much-less-than-what-infrastructure-ontario-has-been-saying-and-the-proof-is-in-its-own-documents/)

Thanks for the response! I think Pixelfed would be a great addition, since it will probably be popular. I'm not so sure about BookWyrm. Its network is fairly healthy, and it's usually used as an alternative to Amazon's Goodreads, but it maybe one that is worth surveying the community about.

Looking forward to Fedecan's future!

Glad to hear it. A Grafana dashboard sounds cool!

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone involved in formalizing this. Really helps to know that lemmy.ca will be support and stable for a while to come. I really also love the census you did. Would love to see that continue. I've signed up to support monthly through GitHub.

I'm going to brain-dump some suggestions that come to mind for the future:

• I really like how OpenCollective.com makes it easy to see the incoming and outgoing transactions for a fund. You've setup up a bunch of payment options already, so I don't want to add to that burden, but it would be cool to see a similar kind of reporting for Fedecan -- it doesn't have to be super sophisticated, heck even a CSV transaction log would do. It would be useful for transparency, but also so that the community can ensure Fedecan's expenses are comfortably paid for.
• My dream is that the Fediverse provides viable alternatives to big tech's social platforms, and the first thing that comes to mind is how Facebook and its various services are the default for so many people. Facebook' Social Graph, Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, Facebook Marketplace and Instagram come to mind. If Fedecan can work towards providing a stable alternative to even one of those, it would be an effort worth supporting.
• Currently the only other Fediverse services I use are Mastodon through social.coop, and BookWyrm through Bookrastinaing. I'd love to see Fedecan build or support essential services like that.
• This is leaving the Fediverse scope, but I recently learned about an initiative from India where they're tackling monopolies like Uber by building services that don't take commission. NammaYatri.in is one example. They use the Beckn protocol and India's ONDC stack. In the very long term, I wonder if Fedecan could support those kinds of initiatives, to setup alternatives with healthier incentives baked in.

The current versions of ChatGPT are quite stable in their outputs. If I enter the title and subtitle of this article, it completes it with very similar results: