Mayor Chow fights extension of Billy Bishop airport lease

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In public, Mayor Olivia Chow says she supports Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport; in private – that’s apparently another story. As council considers a proposal to install federally mandated safety requirements, Chow is reportedly pushing hard to ensure the airport’s operators don’t get their way.

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That includes hinting to councillors who vote the wrong way that they could lose their committee chair positions, up for renewal in two months, according to City Hall sources.

Chow’s opposition to Billy Bishop’s very existence is well documented. Yet as mayor, Chow has proven herself to be practical on most issues, rather than ideological.

Not so with the airport.

Two weeks ago, the mayor bristled at the suggestion that she was doing anything but trying to help Billy Bishop succeed.

“Oh, come on. Give me a break. I’m not trying to shut down the airport. We’re trying to make the runway safe as quickly as possible,” Chow said in an email to The Toronto Sun.

That last part of the email, “as quickly as possible,” takes on a new meaning when you look at how things have transpired. With three options on the table for how Billy Bishop meets the federal safety requirements, Chow is choosing one — No. 1 — which she claims will make things safe quickly.

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In reality, she’s giving in to her base and groups like Waterfront for All and Parks not Planes.

These groups want the airport closed and are opposed to any extension of the agreement between the city, Ports Toronto and the federal government. That agreement currently runs out in 2033, and these groups have called for the airport to be shut down after that.

In July, a city report on the future of the Toronto Islands mused about turning the whole place into a park.

“In alignment with current Official Plan policy, if the airport were to cease operating, it is the policy of the City of Toronto to seek conversion of the airport lands to park uses, or a combination of park and residential uses,” the city’s Master Plan for Toronto Island Parks states.

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The Runway End Safety Area of RESA is the federal safety requirement, and it needs to be in place by mid-2027. The tripartite agreement that the airport operates under only goes until 2033 leaving little time for Ports Toronto and the airport operator, Nieuport Aviation, to recoup the cost of their investment in building the RESA.

They have asked for the agreement governing the airport to be opened up to extend life of Billy Bishop. This is what Chow and councillors like Ausma Malik and Gord Perks are fighting against. They don’t want the airport lease extended.

“We did not have the direction to go into this negotiating a larger agreement that would bind the City of Toronto for another 50 years,” City Manager Paul Johnson said at an executive committee meeting last week.

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He had been asked why city staff was recommending option No. 1 of the RESA proposals instead of options No. 2 or No. 3. Those other options would provide additional benefits, including an improved runway and the installation of a noise-reducing wall.

Those options obviously also cost more, and to spend that kind of money would require extending the agreement and operation of the airport.

Chow remains philosophically opposed to the airport and only supports doing the bare minimum to meet federal requirements. Not a single person in the industry, or with knowledge of the functioning of Billy Bishop, believes that Chow is supportive of the airport’s long-term success.

This airport is results in $2.1 billion in economic activity which supports 2,000 jobs at the airport, and nearly 4,500 off-site jobs are supported by Billy Bishop. More than 300,000 passengers use the airport annually, a number that will only grow after U.S. Customs pre-clearance is added in 2025.

Mayor Chow’s silly games with the future of Billy Bishop airport need to stop. Her ideological stance should not hurt the future of the airport or the city’s economy.

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