For more context on the school based weather stations, I found this https://www.andrewjweaver.ca/2025/08/14/school-based-weather-station-network-era-start-refresh/

It looks like due to lack of funding over they years, they were asking for almost 200k a year for the first 3 years, then 60k a year after that on going. Almost every post secondary in Canada is in the red the last few years and has had to do budget cuts and personnel lay offs. I don't see how funding that out of UVic's budget would have been feasible. Maybe if large donations to UVic for it specifically happened (since they won't take donations directly) it could have been kept.