Pierre Poilievre says he is 'unequivocal' in supporting an expanded Billy Bishop airport

“This is the business district of our biggest city,” Poilievre said during a news conference in Toronto. “Why would we not want business travellers to arrive in our business district? It would allow us to have long-haul international flights from the heart of Toronto.”

The Ontario government’s proposed expansion would require the takeover of space in nearby community and extend the main runway from its current length of 1,216 metres to up to 1,830 metres, bringing the total end-to-end land mass to more than 2,000 metres, as reported by the Star’s Estella Ren.

Billy Bishop currently serves mainly smaller, propeller aircraft, and would need infrastructure changes to accommodate commercial passenger jets.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has recently led council in passing a motion to register its opposition to the province’s expropriations, explore Toronto’s legal options and ask the federal government, which is a signatory to the airport agreement, to intervene.

Poilievre’s endorsement of the expansion plan came a day after area residents near the Little Norway Park, which would lose a third of its land to make room for the airport expansion, organized a rally to speak against the plan, demanding jets remain barred from the airport. Many are worried about increased air and noise pollution, as well as escalated traffic.

Flanked by other Conservative MPs, Poilievre said expanding Billy Bishop would take traffic off the highways between downtown and Toronto Pearson International Airport in Mississauga, and allow the province to expand air transportation.

“Pearson is a disaster,” he told reporters. “Why is Pearson so bad? Because there’s no competition for many of its flights. By extending the runway, Pearson would have to fight for more air transportation traffic and perform better. I want to see better air transportation at a lower cost, that leaves on time for a change, and that requires competition in our biggest city.”

Poilievre said he is “unequivocal” in his support for more flights, more competition, lower costs and an expanded Billy Bishop. It would reduce both highway traffic and pollution for the country because it would take cars off the road when travellers could fly directly to the city, which would attract more tourism and business trips to the city, he added.

“It is a win-win,” he said. “All we need is governments to get out of the way. This is a massively profitable expansion that will pay for itself through the fees that the airlines themselves pay when they land.”

In its spring fiscal update last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government floated the idea of potential airport reforms to ”modernize the governance of airport authorities, explore options to update the framework for airport rents, and to increase the capacity of airports for economic development and reinvestment in infrastructure.”

In Toronto, Poilievre chided Carney’s “credit card budgeting” and reiterated that Canada now has the lowest investment per worker, the highest food price inflation, the second-lowest productivity and the second-highest unemployment in the G7 “after a decade of Liberal deficits, taxes and red tape.”

“The more government spends, the more things cost,” Poilievre said in a news release. “The cost of government is driving up the cost of living. Canadians are paying more for food, gas, housing and taxes because Liberals keep spending money they do not have.”