The federal government has agreed to a $768.6 million contract with PCL Construction to build six new science facilities on the Canadian Food Inspection Ottawa Laboratory site.
The Government of Canada refers to this project as the Regulatory and Security Science (RSS) Main project. It says the project’s eventual facilities will accommodate 275 scientists and researchers working in 25 science programs. Work done there will benefit the Canada Border Services Agency, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada.
The site in question sits on 2,000 acres of land on Fallowfield Road in Nepean and has three functional laboratories right now. The government built the existing facility in 1972, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has had jurisdiction there since its own creation in 1997.
‘Support high-quality-jobs’
The campus is in Ward 9 and local city councillor Sean Devine welcomes the announcement.
“This is a major investment in our community will support high-quality jobs, cutting-edge research, public health, food safety, emergency preparedness, and border security for decades to come,” Councillor Devine said on social media.
The government did not explain the exact functions of the new facilities, but said that they will “strengthen Canada’s food supply, enhance emergency preparedness and secure our borders…”
The project should contribute roughly $900 million to Canada’s NATO-related defence spending over the next 10 years. Canada reached its promised rate of 2 per cent of total GDP devoted to NATO-related spending earlier this year. NATO members are under an additional commitment to spend 5 per cent of total GDP on defence by 2035.
Ottawa launched what would become Laboratories Canada in the 2018 federal budget, in which it pledged $2.8 billion over five years to update our country’s ageing laboratory infrastructure. The 2024 budget added $900 million more to the initiative, which had since been stretched into a 25-year timeline.
The government says this phase of the RSS project will be operational by 2031.
