A new campaign is demanding the federal government halt any changes to Billy Bishop airport until Toronto residents are properly consulted on a detailed plan for the controversial expansion.
“Our city’s Inner Harbour is truly a crown jewel, one of our greatest civic achievements,” reads a letter signed by 28 prominent Torontonians, including author Margaret Atwood, theatre producer David Mirvish and Olympic gold medallist Hayley Wickenheiser, sent this week to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Minister of Transport Steven MacKinnon and Housing and Infrastructure Minister Gregor Robertson.
“Once major physical urban transformations occur on the Inner Harbour, they will be impossible to reverse.”
The recent province-led push for a significant expansion of Toronto’s island airport has raised concern about impacts from the harbour to housing, as well as the city losing its role in airport oversight. While limited information has been made public by the federally-mandated Toronto Port Authority, the expansion would permit jet aircraft with a longer runway, and potentially quintuple the number of annual passengers to 10 million.
The province, meanwhile, has touted significant benefits to the city from creating more jobs to making travel easier for tourists and businesses, while Carney recently said he has “not formed an opinion,” after initially calling it a “very interesting vision.”
A new online resource
Ken Greenberg, an architect and internationally recognized urban designer, and Anne Golden, former head of both the United Way of Greater Toronto and The Conference Board of Canada, are among the business and civic leaders leading the charge on the campaign, which includes launching an online information hub dubbed “Reality Check.”
The initiative comes as the federal government opened a roughly month-long public consultation Monday, which included a form to an anonymous online survey, sparking immediate backlash.
“Normally, you have a plan and then you have consultations on the plan. There is no plan, which is why we felt compelled to issue a reality check,” Greenberg said.
Greenberg added he wants Torontonians to use their information campaign as “ammunition” as they respond to the government consultation, which he said he worries is already leaning toward a predetermined decision.
The TPA has previously said it could take up to a year before a final plan is released and the expansion could cost as much as $5 billion. Meanwhile, the airport authority said the “modernized” airport could generate $8.5 billion annually in economic output by 2050.
Golden says the basis for that claim hasn’t been scrutinized.
“You have speculation, you have numbers pulled out of thin air, so-called economic benefits which in fact are based on nothing,” Golden said.
Some areas of concern with unanswered questions, the campaign notes, include transportation, congestion and parking in downtown Toronto, pollution levels in the inner harbour, and noise levels along with other potential quality of life implications for 300,000 residents in growing waterfront communities. A recent city staff report said thousands of current and future housing units could be affected.
The campaign demands an “evidence-based long-term” plan, answering those questions, be given ample opportunity for a full, public debate.
Province working to push forward expansion
In a statement to the Star, Ontario’s Transportation Ministry spokesperson Dakota Brasier said: “The first step in our plan is completing the expropriation of the city’s portion of the land.”
Once that’s done the province will “continue to work closely” with the Toronto Port Authority and the federal government to “advance” this project,” she said.
Deborah Wilson, TPA’s vice president of communications and public affairs, said in a statement they welcome the consultations but during that time “will limit our comments to the media out of respect for the process underway.”
Others at the helm of the “Reality Check” campaign include Paul Bedford, the city’s former chief planner; David Powell, retired lawyer and former CEO of the Canadian Finance & Leasing Association; Cameron Charlebois, former chair of the Canadian Urban Institute; and Helen Burstyn, past chair of Waterfront Toronto.
Signatories of their letter also include: Bob Rae, David Crombie, Art Eggleton, Jane Pepino, Chris Winsor, Jack Winberg, Douglas Knight, Kathleen Hughes, Dominic D’Alessandro, John Campbell (former Waterfront Toronto CEO), Alan Broadbent, Diane Blake, David Baskin, Shelley Ambrose, Shirley Blumberg, Mitchell Cohen, Stephen J.R. Smith, Mark Wilson and Jennifer Keesmaat.
