For more than a decade, at the Centre of the Universe kids learned while looking out into the vastness of deep space that our modest blue planet is not, in fact, the centre of the universe. Now, due to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s industry-oriented redesign of our national science agency, the popular education facility has been senselessly closed.

The centre, which opened its doors in 2001 and shuttered them likely for good last week, is among the first casualties of the recent misguided makeover of the National Research Council. The federal government announced in May that the NRC, once a leader in pure research and science education, will now dedicate itself to large-scale industry-driven research projects, effectively transforming its $900-million budget into a business subsidy.

The Centre of the Universe, located in Victoria, British Columbia, is a particularly sad loss. It’s no surprise that petitions launched this week to save it already have thousands of signatures. The facility, which cost $250,000 annually to run, was so well used that most Saturdays kids had to wait outside for their turn to peer through one of the world’s most powerful telescopes. Encouraging kids to care about science, never mind clamour for a chance to learn, is important to our future prosperity and no easy task. And for $250,000? That’s about 1 per cent of what the government spent on advertising the Economic Action Plan last year.

The closure was part of a larger $1.8-million cut to the NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics which, among other things, keeps tabs on the giant asteroids in Earth’s orbit. We may learn too late how wise that decision was.

The demise of the Centre of the Universe is a symbol of all that’s wrong with the Harper government’s retrograde science policy. Putting a dent in Canada’s basic research infrastructure, muzzling government scientists and suppressing their findings, killing youth outreach programs — these are attacks on Canada’s science culture. And when future governments inevitably begin to bear the economic and social costs of these decisions, they will find that culture is something easier to dismantle than to rebuild.

The centre will be missed; the commitment to science it represented more so.

Read more about: