The Ontario Science Advisory Panel released a statement confirming that it was notified by Public Health Ontario last week that its work will be suspended as of September 6.
The move comes less than five months after the provincial agency announced it was taking over the “operation and oversight” of the independent board, previously hosted by the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
It also comes after the resignation of longtime board co-chair Dr.  Adalsteinn Brown earlier this month.
In a memo sent to Ontario Public Health President and CEO Michael Serra and released publicly Friday, the remaining panel members cited several “core principles” of their “original mandate,” including the ability to “identify and study every scientific question that our Members felt would help Ontario fight COVID-19” and “communicate publicly and openly about the results of our investigations”.
The panel also shared several lessons they said they learned during the pandemic.
These lessons were: science matters, equality matters, transparency is critical, independence must be perceived and delivered, and timeliness and relevance are essential.
“The COVID-19 pandemic continues and is contributing to the growing number of crises in Ontario’s health care system,” the memo says.  “Each of us at the scientific table has a role to play in the effort to ensure the health of Ontario, and we will now fully return to this work.”
The Ontario Science Advisory Panel is made up of dozens of scientists and other experts who have volunteered their time to study many aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, often providing blunt advice to the government about the need for public health measures to contain of the spread.
The panel also had a separate modeling team responsible for frequent COVID-19 projections that often provided early warning of impending waves of the pandemic.
In a statement released Friday, the panel’s scientific director Dr.  Farhad Razak noted that it had been a “great privilege” to serve at the table since its inception and said he hoped some of the “difficult” advice he provided eventually “helped ease the pain” during “his worst public health crisis last century”.
Razak, however, warned that “the pandemic will remain a daunting challenge for the foreseeable future” and expressed hope that the “leaders on whom the table was built” will live on in some form.
“I hope we can all take the necessary steps to reduce the burden of the pandemic to keep our system running in the difficult months ahead,” he said.
The advice was often ignored by the government
The science board’s advice often differed from the actions taken by the Ford government throughout the pandemic, with former science director Dr.  Peter Juni to be heard frequently on the airwaves to forcefully urge Queen’s Park to act more aggressively.
He has also at times found himself at odds with some of the decisions made by the Ford government, particularly its decision to close playgrounds and other recreational facilities during a devastating wave of the pandemic in the spring of 2021.
The dismantling of the board comes as cases are down in more than half of Ontario’s public health units, even as experts warn of a wave of declines in the pandemic that could further strain Ontario’s already overburdened health care system.
Students are also set to return to classrooms last week, with mask orders no longer in effect and many other temporary public health actions, such as grouping and mandatory physical distancing, no longer in effect.
At this point it is unclear why Public Health Ontario decided to dismantle the board.
CP24 has reached out for comment but has not received a response.