Thoughts before the NCC Announcement #protectthefarm

Photo credit: Richard Hinchcliffe.

Today's the day: The National Capital Commission will be releasing its assessment of federally-owned sites being considered for a new Civic Campus.

Four of the sites are at the Farm, of those three include actively used research fields for studies ranging from the low-carbon farming (zero-till) to breeding soybeans that can be commercially competitive as far north as Edmonton. Agriculture Canada (in ATIP-ed documents) has said losing these fields would have “too great an impact from a research perspective.”

The Sir John Carling site, which stretches well south and west of the relatively small footprint of that old building (demolished in 2013), includes numerous heritage buildings, laboratories, and other facilities. AgCan pegs relocation and rebuilding costs in the "hundreds of millions of dollars," let alone having to work around heritage designated buildings--which have more protection than a federal heritage site.

On top of that, AgCan is planning to build new interpretation and research facilities at the site to support the Farm's core research mandate.

The bottom line: Agriculture Canada officials, as quoted by Liz Payne in this morning's Citizen (and Sun, where she's actually a lot more aggressively making her case), have told the NCC:

"From a research and heritage perspective, the Department feels that an ideal outcome would be that the integrity of the CEF remain intact and that an alternate site be selected that does not include lands within its boundaries.”

After 10:35 we'll know if the NCC listened to their colleagues at AAFC, and if it will protect science, respect heritage, preserve greenspace in the heart of the Capital.

Review of Na Li's /Kensington Market/.

Click here and scroll down to page 16 for my review of Na Li's Kensington Market: Collective Memory, Public History, and Toronto's Urban Landscape in the latest issue of The Public Historian (38.2, pp. 113-114).

The Central Experimental Farm as a "Truth-Spot."

Detail from "Soils of the Central Experimental Farm" showing the original 465 acres.

Author's note: this post is a bit of an experiment. In it I use the Central Experimental Farm to explore Thomas Gieryn's concept of "truth-spots." It is written in a particular moment when the Farm is still facing threats to its research fields, and those politics of course carry through. In a sense this post is inspired by the great community of active historians and my desire to draw out the concepts embedded within my other public writings on the subject. Some of the links may lead to articles behind (steep) paywalls.

In the conclusion to his exploration of the interwar Chicago School of Urban Studies, Thomas Gieryn posits that "in the emplacement of its practices...science is probably not the exception, but the rule."

Gieryn's current research project focuses on what he calls "truth-spots." Simply put, truth-spots are locations where knowledge about the world is created and, importantly, legitimized. When applied to science this presents a curious "paradox of place and truth" (emphasis in original).*

Science, like all human endeavors, is a cultural process. People do it in places. It involves learned practices and discourses. But objectivity is (often) a central legitimizing discourse in science. The literary abstraction of science from where it is practiced is part of the epistemic scaffolding used to reinforce its status as universal knowledge. As Gieryn notes, "scientific claims are diminished in their credibility as they are situated somewhere, as if their truthfulness depended upon conditions located only there."

At the same time some subjective contexts of science can provide studies performed or published in their gambit with powerful legitimacy. There's prestigious universities (the Ivy League and Oxbridge); journals (Nature or Science); institutions (CERN and NASA); and field stations (Rothamsted Research and Kew Gardens).

Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm is another such institution.

Letter to the Editor: Research faces more determined threats than geese.

Re: What do you do when geese eat all your research?

As Agriculture Canada sends out tenders for non-lethal anti-goose dogs to patrol its research fields at the Central Experimental Farm, another perennial threat looms over this important federal research station: the Ottawa Hospital. After being rebuffed when it asked for land at the Experimental Farm for a new Civic Campus in 2008 because of the Farm’s important scientific and heritage value and unsuccessfully floating the question again in 2012, the Hospital was able to secure a Memorandum of Understanding in November 2014 with the intervention of John Baird as minister of the National Capital Commission. Earlier this year Catherine McKenna told the Hospital to go back and do its homework as it has become increasingly clear that the scientific, green space, and heritage value of the Farm were ignored by Baird in 2014.

Undeterred by evidence of the longstanding scientific value of the Experimental Farm—its climate research was reported as early as 2008—and its proud 130 year history supporting Canadian farmers, recognized by its 1998 designation as a national historic site of Canada, executives at the Ottawa Hospital continue to focus on the Farm as the home for their new campus with three of its four options under investigation at the Farm, and two of those different configurations of the original 60 acres.

It is past time for McKenna and her cabinet colleagues Ministers Melanie Joly and Lawrence MacAulay to take a strong stand in support of Canada’s public science and, given the budget’s strong words linking agricultural research to fighting climate change, protect the Central Experimental Farm against all development.

Peter Anderson
Ottawa, Ontario

Note: I submitted this as a letter to the editor for MetroNews Ottawa. As my commute doesn't usually take me to where MetroNews is distributed, I have no idea if they published it in this or modified form.

Where's the NCC?

Mark Kristmanson (CEO National Capital Commission), John Baird (then-Minister for the NCC), Jack Kitts (CEO, Ottawa Hospital)

On the 3rd of November 2014 three men took to the stage to make an important announcement about the future of the Ottawa Hospital. Mark Kristmanson, CEO of the National Capital Commission, John Baird, then-minister for the NCC, and Jack Kitts, CEO of the Ottawa Hospital, were delighted to share the news that 60 acres of research land at the Central Experimental Farm would be transferred from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to the NCC for lease to the Ottawa Hospital.

(Notably absent from the scene was anyone from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.)

As readers of this blog are well aware, this came as a surprise to everyone. The deal was negotiated in secret in early 2014 despite AAFC categorically rejecting a hospital on the site in 2008. Its absence from the event may suggest how its negotiators felt about being involved in the severance.

Nonetheless, in documents obtained through access to information and freedom of information requests, as well as statements by both John Baird in 2016 and Mark Kristmanson in 2015, the National Capital Commission played the key roll in "facilitating" the proposed land transfer.

And yet since the 2015 election the NCC has been all but absent from the scene. Melanie Joly, the new minister for the NCC, has not said a word publicly. Mark Kristmanson seems to have disappeared even though in spring 2014 he was personally commenting on the draft treasury board submission.

The NCC's role deserves to have more light shed on it.

Why, for example, did the NCC fail to include the land severance during its 2014 consultations on the Capital Urban Lands Plan?

(A plan that, conveniently enough, includes a new "non-federal facility" category precisely for these 60 acres. A plan, further, that makes clear it should overrule any other plan for lands under its mandate, including the Central Experimental Farm which has its own longterm management plan. The NCC had the opportunity, and perhaps the responsibility, to bring this forward during the 2014 consultations on the Capital Urban Lands Plan.)

Why, when asked by a consultant hired by AAFC in spring 2014 for details about the Hospital's case did the NCC simply shrug and say "we'll have to go with what we have"?

Why did the NCC, in late April 2014, tell AAFC negotiators that it understood their interests and wanted to help protect them, and then a few days later tell the Hospital that the NCC wants a design that uses the whole 60 acres being offered? That AAFC's interests were its own and not the NCC's? And that perhaps Mark Kristmanson and Jack Kitts should be personally brought to bear to halt complaints from AAFC regarding the size of the land grab?

Jack Kitts of the Ottawa Hospital has been abandoned to carry the water for the NCC as this deal has soured under ever increasing scrutiny. I am sure he is also wondering "Where is the NCC?"

Stop Coveting the Experimental Farm, and Other Thoughts.

Research Fields at the 60 acres, source: GoogleMaps.

You can read my latest op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen here.

My argument has two main points:

One: Jack Kitts, the CEO of the Ottawa Hospital, has stated in earlier articles that it would have been inappropriate to hold consultations before the Hospital had secured a location for a new civic campus and had approval to move their design process forward from the Local Health Integration Network. I disagree for three reasons.

First, in March 2012 the LHIN authorized the Hospital's pursuit of the Experimental Farm land (despite being told by AAFC to look else where in 2008--there's an open question what happened between 2008 and 2012) on the condition that it undertakes "community engagement." Four years and six days will have passed before the first "public information session" which is only supposed to be about the design of a new campus.

Second, the Central Experimental Farm is a National Historic Site of Canada. It has a longterm management plan. There is an advisory council that is supposed to guide its future. Both are readily discoverable with a quick Google search.

Third, the Hospital keeps saying it wants a "21st Century Hospital." It cannot achieve this goal relying on 20th century processes that ignore the very people who would point out the flaws in its arguments. It will be 470 days since the announcement and the first "public information session" and the Hospital has actively avoided consultation as both the Citizen and CBC have reported. A 21st century process would have engaged the community early and often.

Two: The Central Experimental Farm is not a land bank. It is an active research station and a national historic site of Canada. The Farm's longterm management plan acknowledges the importance of ongoing research as the best way to celebrate its role in Canadian history. The Ottawa Hospital, and others, however look at the Farm as empty land. It is not empty although, as I argued in more detail back in November 2014, discursive techniques are being employed to empty it of meaning to facilitate construction and development projects.

The Hospital is treating the Farm as free land. Part of the many flaws in its 2007 site selection process--a process that is still defining its choices--is the idea that the only costs that matter are the Hospital's. It did not take into account the benefits of agricultural research at the Farm, and on the land across the street in particular.

As of mid-February the Hospital still hasn't spoken with an agricultural scientist.

They are operating in a low information environment based on a desire to hop across Carling and abandon the existing campus once construction is complete. And that is the root of almost all of the Hospital's ongoing problems. They need to slow down and listen.

In response to today's letter writer in the Citizen, who suggests the Farm should remain on the table, I want to posit if the Hospital is looking for vacant land in the city then the Farm should immediately be taken off the table. As I said above: the Farm is not empty land.

The Great Chicken Civil War, and Other Fowl Tales from the Farm

 

Last night I gave a public lecture as part of the Ottawa Historical Association's lecture series. You can listen to my talk here: