Fewer jobs than anticipated will be coming to Summerland research station from an agriculture research centre on Vancouver Island.
Earlier this year it was announced that the Centre for Plant Health near Victoria would be closing and the functions and a number of jobs would move to Summerland.
Instead, on Oct. 29 the federal government announced their decision not to close the centre after Elizabeth May, MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands, rallied for the centre to remain open.
“I am grateful to Minister (Gerry) Ritz for listening to our concerns and for re-thinking the earlier decision to move its quarantine and virus testing functions to Summerland, which is the heart of British Columbia’s fruit and wine region,” said May in a news release.
“This is a victory for our community, and for all those elsewhere who fought to protect the excellent science done here for 100 years.”
The Centre for Plant Health has been a site for the quarantine and virus-testing of new plant stock in the province for the last 100 years.
Its location on Vancouver Island, separate from the mainland, has been an important prevention measure in the transfer of viruses or pests to B.C.’s primary agricultural regions.
Six positions at the centre are being moved to Agriculture Canada’s facility in Summerland but 23 full time positions are being kept. In April the federal government had announced the Vancouver Island Lab would be closed as a cost-cutting measure and that some of the 40 jobs would be relocated to Summerland.
The plan was for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to move its activities from the Centre for Plant Health Sidney Laboratory to the Pacific Agri-Food Research Centre at Summerland.
The Vancouver Island lab has been providing testing, virus indexing, therapy and technology development for viruses and pests of grapevines, tree fruits and other crops.
Some of the plant disease research conducted at the Vancouver Island facility has been:
o 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
o Testing promising selections from Canadian tree fruit and grape breeders to ensure that original releases to industry are free from potential viruses
o Eliminating virus infections from valuable fruit, grape and ornamental clones by heat therapy
o Auditing the reliability of recognized foreign certification programs by testing plant samples from imported commercial shipments for virus infection