The Ontario government, citing Toronto Port Authority plans, has said the Billy Bishop Airport expansion aims to carry 10 million annual passengers, or more than five times the current level.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Expanding Billy Bishop Airport’s main runway on Toronto’s waterfront by nearly a kilometre into Lake Ontario to allow for commercial jets and millions more annual passengers could cost a total of $4-billion to $5-billion over the next 25 years, the head of the federal agency that oversees the facility says.
Roelof-Jan (RJ) Steenstra, the Toronto Port Authority’s president and chief executive officer, revealed the price tag – many times higher than those floated for expansion plans in past years – at a provincial legislative committee this week. The port authority did not respond to an e-mail on Wednesday asking for more details on the cost estimate.
Three weeks ago, a spokeswoman for the agency, Deborah Wilson, told The Globe and Mail in an e-mail that the port authority had “not begun costing out the financial details of airport modernization” and that the plans were “still very much in the vision stage.”
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On Tuesday, Mr. Steenstra appeared before the province’s standing committee on heritage, infrastructure and cultural policy. It held one day of hearings on the Ontario government’s proposed legislation to strip the City of Toronto of its stake in the island airport in order to expand Billy Bishop and allow commercial jets over the municipality’s objections.
The bill, which also includes sweeping powers to potentially take other land on the Toronto Islands, is aimed at upending a decades-old deal that includes the city, the port authority and the federal government and that currently restricts the airport’s commercial carriers to turboprops. Premier Doug Ford has also pledged to declare the airport a “special economic zone,” where provincial and municipal laws can be suspended.
Mr. Ford says the expansion will boost the economy. But critics have long warned that jets and millions more passengers a year at Billy Bishop would cause traffic chaos and spoil the waterfront’s parks, trails, beaches and residential areas. The federal government must still approve the expansion plan to accommodate jets.
On Tuesday, answering questions from Toronto NDP MPP Jessica Bell at the committee hearing, Mr. Steenstra said the airport expansion would be phased in, with investments made over time.
He said he was not expecting provincial money and that he had not asked Ottawa for a cheque or received any commitment of federal cash.
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Mr. Steenstra had told The Globe last month that the financing could potentially include both private and public funds, including from Ottawa, but that it would depend on what programs were available.
In that interview, he also first disclosed that the port authority was mulling an up-to 600-metre runway extension that would require as much as 900 metres in new land mass, most of it jutting to the west, away from Toronto’s central harbour.
Speaking to the committee, the port authority CEO said his agency does not yet have a detailed draft expansion plan and won’t for another six to 12 months. He pledged to release it for what he called “robust public consultation.”
Mr. Steenstra also told MPPs that the city had not yet seen the airport’s “preliminary work,” but that this had been shared both with the province and the federal government. He blamed a “scheduling issue,” but said his agency would be meeting with city officials.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, a long-time opponent of jets and airport expansion, said the city needs to have a say: “I don’t see a very clear plan at this point, other than a very hefty price tag.”
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The Ontario government, citing port authority plans, has said the expansion aims to carry 10 million annual passengers, or more than five times the current level. (Mr. Steenstra told The Globe last month that this increase would take place over 30 to 50 years.)
Operations and expansion at Billy Bishop and other commercial airports in Canada are normally funded by fees paid by airlines and passengers, not taxpayer money.
A smaller expansion is already in the works at Billy Bishop, with the city’s approval. This plan will see the construction of 150-metre safety buffer zones, mandated by Transport Canada, at the ends of its existing main runway.
Needed just to continue current operations with the existing turboprops, this move has an estimated $64-million cost, to be covered by a combination of debt and airport-improvement fees charged to passengers. To make this financially viable, the city signed onto a 12-year extension of the deal that allows the airport to operate, extending it from 2033 to 2045.
Porter Airlines and Air Canada currently fly turboprops out of Billy Bishop. A 2013 expansion plan pushed by Porter, which would have added 442 metres to the runway, was estimated at $92-million.
However, a 2015 report by the consulting firm Oliver Wyman, produced for Air Canada, concluded that this plan would actually run closer to $1-billion, involve big changes to hangars and terminals, and potentially result in the highest airport-improvement fees for passengers in Canada.
At committee, Mr. Steenstra suggested that new competition, resulting from an expansion to accommodate jet traffic, would cause both airfares and airport fees to fall.
Ms. Bell, the NDP MPP, said in an interview Wednesday that she suspects the plans will require both government subsidies and higher fees for passengers.
“It’s magical thinking,” she said. “... The numbers do not add up.”