When Premier Doug Ford revived plans to allow jets at Billy Bishop Airport, he framed the move as essential to Toronto’s economic future — promising jobs, lower airfares, and relief for an overburdened Pearson Airport.
“It’s all about convenience,” Ford said, calling the island airport a “crown jewel for economic growth.”
But not everyone is sold on the plan.
Some experts are raising concerns that the province has put forward little evidence showing that expanding Billy Bishop Airport will meaningfully boost Toronto’s economy. And the announcement is on course to pit islanders and downtown residents who oppose expansion they feel will reshape Toronto’s waterfront, against the interests of private business and Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government.
Porter Airlines, which has the lion’s share of the 246 landing slots at Billy Bishop, has long advocated for the introduction of jets at the airport, but environmental concerns from residents living along the waterfront and community advocacy groups have so far held expansion back. The airline has since upgraded its fleet to standards it claims will meet environmental and noise regulations.
Air Canada, which also operates turboprop aircraft out of the island airport, opposed Porter’s previous jet proposal. Asked whether its position has since changed, the airline said its strategy is built around a “complementary dual‑hub model” between Pearson and Billy Bishop.
In his 2023 report that details potential benefits of expanding Billy Bishop Airport, Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in economic analysis and policy, pointed to studies, one of which found “a 10 per cent increase in air passengers generated a three per cent increase in economic growth across more than 80 U.S. metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2000.”
Florida argued that expanding service at Billy Bishop Airport enhances urban connectivity by enabling business and leisure travelers to access the city core quickly and contribute to local economic activity. In his view, the airport supports high-value industries and events, generates employment, and reinforces Toronto’s position as a competitive global city.
“Airports are among the largest providers of good, high-paying blue-collar jobs for city residents and workers, jobs that are otherwise declining and in increasingly short supply,” Florida stated in his report.
But other experts say Florida’s promise of economic benefit is an overstatement, with one expert calling such declarations “promotional.”
Frédéric Dimanche, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, says Florida’s conclusions would “probably not apply in the context of Billy Bishop,” which he noted would remain a “relatively small airport compared to Pearson Airport.”
Dimanche says that though introducing jets to the island will make travel more convenient for many, “especially business people,” the full extent of its positive impacts on the city remain uncertain.
“It’s not because you open an airport that you’re going to have more traffic,” he said, adding that increased tourism mainly applies to the areas surrounding Billy Bishop. “Will it dramatically change the number of visitors to the city of Toronto? I don’t think so.”
Dimanche also disagreed with the province’s claims that expanding capacity at Billy Bishop Airport will “increase competition” in the air travel sector, ultimately leading to lower prices for consumers. With Porter’s domination of gates expected to continue in an expanded Billy Bishop, Dimanche argues that more airlines would need access to the island in order to create competitive prices for consumers.
In recent years, Porter Airlines has expanded the fleet of jets operating out of Pearson Airport and the destinations it serves, including the west coast of the United States, Florida, and Mexico.
“There are only so many landings and take-offs that can be operated per hour,” said Fred Lazar, an economist at York University’s Schulich School of Business with expertise in aviation and transportation policy, noting that Billy Bishop has one terminal with only eleven gates. “If jets start operating, it’s not as if you’re going to turn Billy Bishop into a mini-Pearson. You just don’t have the capacity of gates to accommodate that many more flights per hour.”
For Toronto to experience significant economic impact as a result of introducing jets, more gates would need to be constructed, allowing an increase in airline traffic.
According to a long-standing intergovernmental arrangement, any changes to Billy Bishop requires approval from the federal government, Toronto Port Authority, and the city. The province’s plan to introduce legislation that would see Ontario take over the city’s role in the agreement means City Hall, a long-standing opponent to expansion, would no longer have a say.
“My top concern is safety,” said Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow in an email statement to the Star. “We cannot let the province’s future plans make the airport unsafe today.”
The Star reached out to the Ontario government for comment on the economic benefit of the expansion, but received no response.
While Dimanche and Lazar question the overall economic boost, some community leaders see value in improved connectivity.
Giles Gherson, CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, believes it’s time for a “modernization and expansion of Billy Bishop” that will better serve a growing Greater Toronto Area.
“The GTA has grown by about two million people over the last 20 years or so,” he said. “One of the lessons learned is that our infrastructure needed to keep up. We had a lot of years that population grew pretty substantially, and infrastructure didn’t.”
Gherson argues that expanding the use of the island airport will entice investment and drive growth within the city as business dealings become more accessible.
While Lazar and Dimanche say that allowing jets to land at Billy Bishop may only shift where visitors arrive in the city, rather than attract more of them overall, Gherson places greater faith in convenience.
”(For) people who are senior executives … being able to get here easily matters to their willingness to come,” Gherson said.
John Kiru, CEO at Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA), also welcomes the introduction of jets at Billy Bishop, telling the Star he expects Ford’s proposal to positively impact waterfront and downtown businesses.
“Let’s not get bogged down in the jet discussion when it’s important to talk about expanding the airport and extracting the economic benefits that would come from an expansion,” he said.
According to the Toronto Port Authority, Billy Bishop contributes about $74 million a year in taxes and other payments to governments, generating roughly $2 billion in economic activity annually.
For Kelly Jackson, vice president of destination development at Destination Toronto, “sustaining this growth requires expanded aviation capacity.”
“Domestic and U.S. visitors are Toronto’s two largest markets, drawing 6.5 million Canadian overnight visitors and 1.5 million from the U.S. last year,” Jackson said in an email statement to the Star. “Most major global cities are served by multiple commercial airports, and expanding Toronto’s route network will help attract more of these visitors and strengthen the city’s competitiveness.”
Still, Lazar believes that the main beneficiaries of such an expansion would likely be the airlines and Nieuport Aviation, the private infrastructure partnership that owns and operates the airport’s sole passenger terminal.
“I suspect Nieuport would like some extra traffic,” Lazar said. “Traffic is constrained now by the number of turboprops that Porter has and that Air Canada operates. So they probably would like to see an expansion to generate more revenues.”
More traffic through the airport, Lazar explains, means “higher concession fees” for Nieuport.
Since its first attempt at introducing jets was shut down by the federal government, Porter Airlines has upgraded its fleet with Embraer E195-E2 aircraft, jets touted as being part of “the most environmentally-friendly single aisle aircraft family. Currently, the Embraer only operate out of Pearson Airport.
Allowing these upgraded aircraft, which seat 132 passengers compared to roughly 90 on the De Havilland Dash 8-400 turboprops Porter currently uses at Billy Bishop, to land on the island could increase Porter’s passengers per flight by up to 47 per cent. The number of flights, though, still remains capped by the Toronto Port Authority, which oversees runway slots in accordance with the World Airport Slot Guidelines, the global standard for scheduling takeoffs and landings.
While increased incoming flights would mean more landing fees going to the Port Authority, which owns 78.5 percent of the land at Billy Bishop, the agency didn’t specify whether there would be changes to slot allocations.
“We believe that progress in aviation must translate into tangible benefits for the people and businesses we serve,” Deborah Wilson, the Port Authority’s vice-president of communications and public affairs, told the Star. “And that includes expanding connectivity.”
