What's going to happen to Kemptville?

Friday, March 14, 2014

by MATT MCINTOSH

The closure of the University of Guelph’s Alfred and Kemptville campuses has prompted varying levels of disappointment from Ontario’s agricultural industry. And questions still linger about the future of at least one of the campuses despite a provincial announcement pledging an effort to keep both open.

“We were very sad to hear about the university’s decision to close the schools,” says Lorne Small, president of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario. “But we do recognize the reality of the situation. Many communities just are not big enough to support schools, and the university has to get its books in order.”

In a phone interview on March 12, Chuck Cunningham, assistant vice-president of communications and public affairs for the University of Guelph, cited operating costs and low student numbers as two of the main reasons for the university’s decision to close the Kemptville and Alfred campuses. Combined with an impending $32.4 million structural deficit over the next three years, Cunningham says the university had to find ways to cut costs without reducing educational quality.

In light of their position, Small says the university needs to find ways to help keep educational opportunities open to people in eastern Ontario. The institution’s plan to relocate the academic programs available at Alfred and Kemptville to Ridgetown and Guelph is a start, he says, but more needs to be done.

More specifically, Small says the university should look at increasing the scope of their “study at home” programs, which would suit those individuals who want to continue their education while working in eastern Ontario.

“It’s kind of a harsh reality unfortunately, but students need to go to Guelph or Ridgetown,” he says.

That harsh reality may not come to pass, however, at least for some students at the Alfred campus. On Thursday, the day after the University of Guelph made an announcement outlining its intentions to close its two eastern Ontario campuses, the provincial government announced that it “is working with La Cité and Collége Boréal to ensure that students in eastern Ontario continue to have access to French-language programs.” The provincial announcement also said it is “open to community-based proposals to maintain programming at the Kemptville campus,” and is coordinating efforts to engage “community leaders, businesses, and institutions to find a path forward for the site.”

The provincial government owns the campuses, and the ministries of Agriculture and Food and of Rural Affairs have an agreement with the university to operate these and other provincially-owned research facilities elsewhere in the province. The current agreement is in effect until 2018.

Eleanor Renaud, Ontario Federation of Agriculture’s director for the counties of Dundas, Frontenac, Grenville, and Leeds, says she hopes a similar arrangement to that found for Alfred might be possible for Kemptville, and that the possibility of partnering with other institutions was to be one of many topics discussed at a general meeting held by the Ontario Federation of Agriculture this morning in Kemptville’s WB George Centre.

Renaud says that going to Guelph or Ridgetown is just not an option for many eastern Ontario students. This is especially true for those who rely on Kemptville’s proximity to their farms and the school’s trade programs, which will not be offered at Ridgetown or Guelph.

In addition, she expresses frustration at how the university handled the closure announcement.

“The University of Guelph never publically discussed the possibility of closing the school with anyone,” she says. “There’s a lot of agriculture in eastern Ontario, but Guelph is too focused on western Ontario.”

One of the facilities being closed along with the Kemptville campus is the Dairy Education and Innovation Center, which was opened in May 2011 and had a price tag of $1.5 million. Mark Foster of Carlton Place’s Jockbrae Farms Ltd. was one of many people who invested money into the dairy facility. He says he was very disappointed to hear of the university’s decision.

“The most disheartening thing is that we were all investors in the school, and the sales pitch at the time was ‘do you want all the dairy research to go to Guelph?’” he says.

“The university included us in the business when we were investing, but we were not included in the dialogue since.”

Mark Cripps, director of communications for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food, says Grant Crack, parliamentary assistant for the minister of rural affairs and francophone affairs, had planned to be at the meeting in Kemptville to discuss a scenario similar to the Alfred partnership. Cripps says that the agriculture ministry is committed to maintaining operations at its eastern Ontario research facilities.

After the university’s announcement, however, both Foster and Renaud say that it will be more difficult for the government and other groups to convince farmers in eastern Ontario to invest.

“When you have shortfalls, you either change the way you do business, or you change the business you do, and I guess that’s what the university is doing,” says Foster. BF