Message to Toronto’s Executive Committee regarding airport expansion
Sent in advance of the December 5 meeting, where members of the committee voted to defer the item to the new year.
CodeBlueTO urges the City of Toronto’s Executive Committee to support staff recommendations relating to the proposed expansion of the Island Airport. We agree with Waterfront Toronto’s position on this issue:
The decision regarding the expansion of BBTCA is a generational question, with impacts that can potentially profoundly affect both the significant achievements that have already been made to transform the waterfront into a destination to live, work and play, and the future revitalization prospects for the entire Waterfront.
At this moment:
- The Toronto Port Authority has not released a master plan for the airport expansion. The Island Airport is alone in Canada for not having such a plan. It seems like this should be a basic starting point Council would require of a project with such significant implications related to City spending, possible opportunity costs, impacts on continued revitalization, and unknown positive and negative results for Toronto residents, as well as visitors.
- Transport Canada has not signed off on the proposed runway extension.
- The scope of infrastructure required to accommodate so many more passengers is prohibitive. The foot of Bathurst Street, and the surrounding area, would require an intensive overhaul in order to accommodate significantly increased traffic and possibly expanded, purpose-built transit. This work would likely be at odds with public investments to reclaim the waterfront – including the current transformation of Queens Quay into an iconic boulevard. It also has the potential to create an undesirable burden on the tax base, as the Toronto Port Authority has made no indication it wants to pay for this. It is unclear how such an investment would be in the City’s interests. Prior to this push for expansion, interested parties failed to submit a convincing, detailed business plan outlining the expansion’s viability (Porter), nor is there a comprehensive master plan for a sustainable, balanced expanded airport (Toronto Port Authority). Cart, meet horse.
- Health impacts of both the current operation as well as an even busier airport, are of concern. It is known that jets emit more nitrogen oxide than the turbo-prop planes now used by Porter Airlines. And Toronto Health indicates that the airport is already making people nearby sicker than people in the rest of the city.
CodeBlueTO is a group composed of concerned residents who come from different parts of Toronto – people who have had varying degrees of involvement in waterfront revitalization over the years. We are united in our commitment to the vision for a revitalized waterfront that Waterfront Toronto has developed together with its community partners. The vision, the revitalization that has been done to date, and plans for future work must be protected from encroachment by inappropriate developments that threaten a very fine balance.
We came together and formed CodeBlueTO to play a significant role in protecting the City’s approved plans for the Port Lands. We’d hate to see years of effort go to waste due to a hasty, ill-conceived rush to expand the airport. Clearly, an expanded airport and the addition of jet aircraft at this central location will have a significant economic impact on development, redevelopment and the value of waterfront lands.
From danger to wildlife to potential loss of green space, and from effects on harbour boating to limitation of urban design possibilities on the Port Lands, the threats to Toronto’s waterfront are real. Opening up the Island Airport to jet aircraft would transform it into a major international transportation facility that would dominate the waterfront and destroy the fine balance of activities that Waterfront Toronto and its community partners have been working so hard to create.
The staff report will be as accurate in January as it is now: there has not been sufficient time allocated to adequately study the potential, wide-ranging consequences of the jet and expansion proposal. CodeBlueTO agrees with City staff that the existing consultants’ reports cannot form a sufficient basis for Council to make a decision to go ahead with Porter’s proposal, and the Port Authority’s late-coming insistence that expansion be coupled with a new lease, locking the City into 50 more years of airport use. (It is both surprising and unfortunate that the TPA was unable to outline its requirement in the spring, before this exercise began.)
We understand that Porter Airlines has been busy at City Hall, lobbying Councillors to move the company’s interests ahead. This airport expansion has an extraordinary potential to reshape Toronto as we know it, and affect life on the waterfront for generations to come. As representatives of all residents, Council’s Executive Committee should not rush this decision based on the soothing words of one business, and in the absence of so much crucial information.
Members of CodeBlueTO know that the need to balance demands on the waterfront could lead the Executive Committee to support staff recommendations, allowing enough time to gather relevant data, as well as to consult both the public and specific stakeholders. However, we cannot support a decision to push through an approval for this expansion, even one with conditions. Too many facts are simply missing. A motion to defer the matter for another month does not change the good work and solid recommendations provided by our public servants.