I think Maple Leaf has emerged in a better light.
The MAPLE program was an attempt to isolate one aspect of NRU's business, which was the molybdenum-99 production, and put it into one place and just do that. It would not have addressed the nuclear engineering side, the research of neutron beams, or any other isotope production issues; it was a single-purpose solution.
There are many problems with that project. It was undertaken very poorly from the beginning, and it has never been demonstrated to be cost-effective. This government has said they want to get out of the isotope business. Building the MAPLE reactors was fundamentally a massive subsidy to a single company to manufacture isotopes.