Back office, my ass.
This is not a "back office" operation. This is a federal laboratory that has evolved since 1916. It's mandate, explained on this page (for as long as it lasts):
With key research areas of:The Centre for Plant Health provides testing, virus indexing, therapy, and technology development for viruses and pests of grapevines, treefruits and other crops.
- Plant introduction and post-entry quarantine testing of all imported tree fruit, grapes, and woody ornamentals that are not accompanied by an acceptable certificate of good health from the exporting country
- Testing promising selections from Canadian tree fruit and grape breeders to ensure that original releases to industry are free from potential viruses
- Eliminating virus infections from valuable fruit, grape and ornamental clones by heat therapy
- Auditing the reliability of recognized foreign certification programs by testing plant samples from imported commercial shipments for virus infection
It was the only one in the country.
Gone.
Flaherty and Harper: Taking the "good" out of government.
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It will be worth watching to see what happens to this facility and the large area of land it occupies. You see, once a very rural stretch of the Saanich Peninsula, the Centre for Plant Health is located in one of the wealthiest sections of Greater Victoria and in the federal riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands. It is bounded by expensive homes to the west (Dean Park Estates) and to the south.
Ringing a few bells?
This was the riding of Harper flunky, Gary Lunn, who's 2008 election campaign remains a source of suspicion.
4 comments:
Ya, but Dave...
The folks that work there at that public institution get are experts at stuff and thus get paid considerably more than folks who work at the private McDonalds just down the highway.
Therefore, they are evil and, according to the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation at least, are wastrels who must be sent packing.
And/or rehired at burger-flipper wages.
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And regarding the riding thing....Can you say....Summerland?
Which is, of course, is pretty much smack, dab in the center in the shiny new Wild Dogwood Nation to come.
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These budget cuts are brutal and clearly anti-knowledge. Whether it the collection of agricultural data and the monitoring of operations or the classification of Aboriginal health data or the collection of poverty statistics or the monitoring of changes to the ozone and global warming impacts or the destruction of gun registry data and the long form census - this regime hates knowledge that contradicts their ideological brand of governing.
Who says we live in an enlightened age?
Willful ignorance is triumphant.
Beijing York hits the nail on the head. The Conservatives know Knowledge is Power, so they don't want anyone having the enough knowledge to challenge their baldfaced lies.
As to the dispostion of the land the Centre for Plant Health sits on, I'm sure it won't be sold for a song to wealthy developer cronies of Gary Lunn, that would be unpossible!
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