This was a matter of some discussion within our membership. There wasn't unanimity at first, but a consensus has developed in support of open access. The genesis of it was a realization that our members, paid for by Canadian taxpayers, were producing vast amounts of literature, journal articles. They were transferring that to private sector publishers for free and often doing the editing and peer review work to ensure that it was up to scratch for free. Then, they were purchasing it back at the taxpayers' expense for huge amounts of money. Think of wage increases and inflation. The skyrocketing cost of these journals was just off the charts. Our folks have Ph.D.s, and there was a realization that maybe this wasn't the best way to go about this.
On April 17th, 2018. See this statement in context.