PC MPP Calls for a Moratorium on Ag Campus Closures

By Amanda Brodhagen, Farms.com

Leeds-Grenville MPP Steve Clark is putting up a fight to save the University of Guelph’s Kemptville and Alfred agricultural campuses from closing in 2015.

The University of Guelph said on March 12, 2014 that it was planning on shutting down the campuses for financial reasons.

Clark is asking for the Province to intervene, and put a two-year moratorium on the closures.

“We know this Liberal government stepped in two years ago when there was talk of shutting down the New Liskeard Agricultural Research Station and put a two-year moratorium in place,” Clark said in a release.

In 2012, former Minister of Agriculture Ted McKeekin declared a two-year moratorium on closing the New Liskeard Agricultural Research Station. But no formal document was signed.

New Liskeard was previously home to an agricultural college, but was shut down in 1994, due to budgetary pressures. While no agricultural education has been taught there in 20 years, the research station has remained operational.

The two-year stoppage on a future closure on the research station was granted to provide northern stakeholders with time to develop a business plan to keep the station.

“He’s not comparing apples to apples,” said Mark Cripps, Communications Director for Kathleen Wynne Minister of Agriculture and Food. “The New Liskeard situation was a research agreement, and that does in fact fall under the purview of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food.”

Cripps adds that the programing at Kemptville and Alfred is the responsibility of the University of Guelph, not OMAF.

During the Mike Harris years, the Progressive Conservative’s shifted agricultural education out of OMAF and over to the University of Guelph. That decision was made in 1997.