Former agriculture officials say keep new Civic off farm

Group doesn’t want hospital built on ‘valuable research fields’

The former deputy minister of Agriculture Canada and other former members of the department’s leadership team have written to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urging him to keep the new Civic hospital off the Central Experimental Farm.

“We would all like to see a new state-of-the-art health care facility built in Ottawa, but we do not believe that valuable research fields of the Central Experimental Farm need to be sacrificed to achieve this,” wrote former deputy minister Gaëtan Lussier in an open letter signed by 13 former agriculture officials, researchers and even a former hospital board member.

The Ottawa Hospital plans to build a $2-billion replacement for the aging Civic hospital. In 2014, the Conservative government announced it would lease 60 acres of the farm across the street from the existing hospital for the new complex.

After widespread criticism of the plan and the way it was carried out, the hospital and the Liberal government have announced they will take a second look at other possible sites. Still, three of the four being reconsidered are located on the farm.

The former members of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s leadership team “that has guided agricultural research at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa” urged Trudeau and his cabinet to protect the farm “for the sake of all Canadians.

“Meeting today’s complex environmental, public health and innovation challenges requires that we strengthen our research capacity as we strive to adapt to these pressing global issues.”

The proposed transfer of land from the Central Experimental Farm to The Ottawa Hospital, Lussier and others wrote, “will impede Canada’s ability to meet these challenges.”

The fields slated for transfer to the hospital, they wrote, support more than 20 studies. “Long-term studies over the past three decades at this site, have drawn collaborators from around the world and generated knowledge and farming methods to combat plant disease, boost crop yields and promote soil health.”

Disrupting the ongoing soil studies, they wrote, would “reset the long-term research clock back to zero and disrupt or displace other important studies, costing millions of dollars and jeopardize decades of public-good research.”

The former agricultural officials noted that short-season soybeans were developed in the fields being considered for transfer to the hospital.

“Thanks to that work, today this crop is grown from Prince Edward Island to Alberta and contributes $2 billion each year to Canada’s economy, the cost of a new Ottawa Hospital every year.”

The federal government is assessing 60 acres at the northwest corner of the farm along Carling Avenue, a parcel of the same size further east slightly, the site of the former Sir John Carling Building at the northeast corner of the farm, and Tunney’s Pasture.

Hospital officials have said they would like to have a decision made by this summer.