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Porter tries to shore up support for jet plan

Competing visions of Toronto’s waterfront clashed Thursday night at a charged public consultation on the plan to expand the island airport.

A standing-room-only crowd packed into a room at the Direct Energy Centre for the town hall to discuss Porter Airlines’ push to convince council to lift the prohibition on jets at Billy Bishop Airport and extend its main runway into Lake Ontario by up to 400 metres.

It was the last public meeting before the issue goes back to Rob Ford’s Executive Committee next week for debate.

Unlike previous consultations, which were dominated by opponents of the plan, the crowd of around 300 people appeared to be roughly split between Porter’s critics and backers, including an unknown number of airline employees who the company bused in to the event.

Troy Gonzalez, one of at least four employees who addressed the crowd, elicited catcalls with a speech about the boutique airline, which he claimed had helped make the airport “an iconic emblem of Toronto.”

“What you don’t see, and what you don’t hear, are the stories represented by each seat on our aircraft,” said Gonzalez, who works in Porter’s sales department. “The grandmother flying in from Halifax to visit her grandchildren the student leaving Toronto to go to university in Montreal.”

Anshul Kapoor, spokesperson for anti-expansion group NoJetsTO, said it wasn’t wrong for Porter to bring its employees to the event. But he claimed that it gave a distorted view of real support for the jet proposal, which could increase Billy Bishop’s annual passenger load of 1.9 million by up to 74 per cent, and swell groundside car traffic by 20 per cent.

“It’s definitely not unethical. But it’s also not a clear representation of Torontonians,” Kapoor said. “We are a citizens’ organization, and a citizens’ coalition. Our people are not bused in, they take time away from their busy days to make sure their voice is heard.”

In a scrum after the meeting, Porter president and CEO Robert Deluce acknowledged that some employees “took advantage of a bus that was made available” but that no one from Porter was induced or rewarded “in any way” to attend.

“No one was told to come out,” he said. “There were a lot of volunteers, a lot of people wanted to participate. Some wanted to actually speak. I was not aware ahead of time who would speak, if anybody, from our organization.”

Despite the visible presence of employees, many people who spoke in favour of Porter’s proposition said they had no personal connection to the company.

One of them was Eileen Smith, who has lived on the waterfront for 13 years and says she can’t distinguish between Porter’s current turboprop fleet and the regular sounds of the city.

“I haven’t felt that planes going into the airport have destroyed my time on the island or the waterfront,” Smith said. “In fact, most of the time you can’t hear them above the other noise.”

But many other residents expressed concerns about the noise, traffic, and environmental impacts of increased aiport activity. Several took aim at what they viewed as an overly hasty review of a project that could affect the lakefront for generations.

The expansion plan only made it onto City Hall’s agenda in April when Mayor Ford walked on a surprise motion at a meeting of his executive, and staff are hoping to deliver a final report on the complex proposal by December.

“I want to know, ladies and gentlemen, why are we in such a hurry?” asked Denys Jones, commodore of the National Yacht Club.

“You represent us,” he told city staff. “We’re the citizens of the city of Toronto. I would like you to take time to evaluate this problem. Take the time!”

Staff appear to share at least some concerns about the timing of the approval process. In the update that will go to Ford’s executive next Tuesday, staff warned that Transport Canada won’t know until May 2014 whether the Bombardier CS100 jet Porter plans to use meets the island airport noise guidelines. That’s months after the December 16-17 meeting at which council is supposed to take a final vote.

“If we don’t have acceptable data by the time we have to report out, we can’t make a recommendation [to council],” said Chris Dunn, the city’s project leader on the expansion review.

After a four-month delay, the CS100 took its first test flight on Monday. Bombardier has told the city that in order to collect the crucial noise data in time for the council vote, it will affix the plane’s engines to a test rig. But the city’s aviation consultants have advised that only an in-air flight on an actual airframe will meet necessary international standards.

“We’re waiting to see what they submit,” said Dunn.

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