「一个没有科学部门的科学馆，还能叫科学馆吗？」安大略科学馆裁掉三十人，整个科学部门一个不留

Start with one sentence, which travelled widely in Canada last week.

It was said by the head of a union.

She asked: a science centre with no science department — can you still call it a science centre?

It sounds like a punchline, but it describes something that is actually happening.

Some background first.

The Ontario Science Centre opened in 1969, in the east end of Toronto.

In Canada, a great many people first became interested in science inside that building.

What makes it what it is, is that you can touch things.

The exhibits can be operated, the experiments happen in front of you, and someone explains the reasoning on the spot.

That is a completely different thing from objects in a case at a museum.

Things in a case only need looking after.

Hands-on exhibits are different: someone has to keep designing, repairing and updating them, and someone has to explain them.

Which is to say, the most important thing this centre has is its people.

In the summer of 2024, that changed.

The provincial government abruptly announced it was closing the science centre.

The reason was an engineering report: several parts of the roof were unsafe.

It closed fast, and has not reopened since.

That is now more than two years.

The government's plan is not to repair it, but to build a new one somewhere else.

The published budget is a billion Canadian dollars.

Until the new building is finished, the old one stays shut.

Last week's news was layoffs: thirty people in total.

The point is not the number. It is who is being cut.

The cuts include the entire science department.

Not a portion of it — the whole department, eliminated.

Also eliminated: the live experiments team, the business team, and security.

The union says those thirty people have worked at the centre for more than five hundred and forty years between them.

Five hundred and forty years, out the door at once.

The director's account is that this is a restructuring.

The word "restructuring" is not good or bad in itself; it describes rearranging a structure.

What you have to look at is what is left after the rearranging.

A science centre with no science department is left with a site, some cases, and an office.

Who thinks up the new exhibits?

Who checks whether what is written on the old exhibits is still correct?

Who runs the live experiments?

When a school group arrives, who teaches them?

All of that sat in the science department.

At this point the shape of the thing is clear.

The government is doing two things at once: shutting the old centre down and building the new one up.

Those two things are very different in kind.

A building can be paused and picked up again; money spent on it stays there and is still there in a few years.

People do not work that way.

When a person leaves, the experience leaves with them, and it does not wait for you in place for a few years.

When the new centre opens, they will have to find people, train them, and do it all over again.

Five hundred and forty years of service does not come back by itself when a new building opens.

So the real problem here is not how much money was saved.

It is that in a place held up by its people, the people were treated as something you can switch off now and switch on later.

A building genuinely can be.

People cannot.

Think about it:

You want to replace something, and the old one has to stop for a while.

During that time, would you keep the people inside it, or cut the costs first?