What is it about Robert Deluce, anyway? Just how has the high-flying Porter Airlines tycoon managed to turn the waterfront Island Airport into his private domain? It’s supposed to be a public asset, paid for by taxpayers’ dollars. And a valuable one at that, worth a couple of billion by some estimates.
Now he’s got designs on the entire waterfront. Deluce’s plan to extend the Island Airport’s main runway by a couple of football fields at either end so he can fly jets out of it has all of a sudden gotten bigger.
Deluce now says he needs to add another 64 metres of runway to land those sleek CS100s he’s planning to buy from Bombardier. He contends the addition will make the already “whisper-quiet” jets even quieter. Well, that’s a plane load of BS. The flight paths of the CS100s will actually disturb the entire waterfront.
Could be me, but Deluce’s Island Airport gambit is resembling the fast one casino developers tried to pull.
As in that offensive, Deluce is pulling every trick in the book to push his monster plan on the waterfront – bought-and-paid-for “studies,” specious public opinion surveys and false promises of pots of gold in economic stimulus at the end of the runway.
Look, up in the sky – it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a front group headed by a former Ontario PC party researcher to pump Deluce’s plan and create the illusion of broad public support.
Some of the same lobbyists involved in the backroom wheeling and dealing during the casino feeding frenzy (here’s looking at you, Jamie Besner) have been logging time with councillors behind closed doors. Count ’em: six pages documenting meetings with councillors since April.
City Hall mandarins have been enlisted in the cause, too. Deputy city manager John Livey can feign surprise all he wants, as he did after locals walked out of the first consultation at Fort York last week. The dialogue set up by the city is, as with the casino debate, structured to effect a certain result that’s not favourable to waterfront communities. Or am I reading too much into the city’s pamphlet on the consultations, which takes pains not to mention any negative impacts of an expanded airport?
It’s all a hoax, of course. But who’s to say Deluce won’t get away with his plans?
The province stepped in to wake Toronto from its casino nightmare. But don’t count on the feds to do likewise in this case. Since Porter first took flight in 2006, Deluce has been successfully greasing wheels to push ahead his private venture at the supposedly publicly owned airport.
The guy running the show in Ottawa, Stephen Harper, is supposed to be a free marketeer. Ditto for his fishing bud, the mayor of Toronto.
Yet for the better part of the last decade, Deluce has had a near monopoly on running the airport, with tens of millions of dollars in capital improvements and subsidies all paid for by you, dear taxpayer, to keep his business a growing concern. Oodles have been spent on a new terminal and other improvements.
Admittedly, the airline industry is one of the most heavily subsidized. But how Deluce has laid exclusive claim to 87 hectares of the most valuable real estate on the water – while kicking out the competition – is a bit of a mystery. But not entirely.
His political connections run deep. Deluce is a regular at both Liberal and Conservative fundraisers. He’s part of the powerful syndicate running the city. Some 60 per cent of the folks using his airline are doing so on business.
The fact Bay Street investors have sunk tens of millions into Porter has assured political support.
It’s worth reminding ourselves of that fact. Waterfront residents have been right to frame the airport debate as a fight between the needs of the biz class and those of residents.
Deluce’s flight plans couldn’t have been achieved without friends on the Toronto Port Authority, the arm’s-length federal agency charged with overseeing the business of the harbour. The TPA has tied its future to the success of the airport. Without it, there’s arguably little need for the Authority – the business of boats isn’t exactly booming.
The TPA’s board of directors is stacked with Harper appointees. It claims it’s not taking a position on Porter’s expansion plans. Also according to the TPA, not a cent of taxpayers’ money is being spent on the pedestrian tunnel now under construction to make the Porter experience more convenient.
But that’s not what the PM said at a Conservative BBQ in Toronto a couple of weeks back. According to him, dollars are flowing to that project from taxpayer coffers.
Would it be a stretch to say the TPA has been running a protection racket for Porter? The hijinks and questions of conflict of interest have been many, to say nothing of the millions in property taxes the TPA has refused to pay the city.
Their marriage of interests dates back to the cancellation of the bridge to the airport in the Miller days. Deluce then sued the city and the feds, claiming lost revenue, and eventually settled out of court. There was no legal obligation on the part of the federal government to compensate Deluce, according to bridge opponents. No binding agreement had been signed, they argued.
But Deluce got a tidy $20 million, with which he bought the Island Airport terminal. Now he’s trying to save his business, the theory in some circles goes, with his jets proposal. (The airline hasn’t published its passenger load numbers since word of its proposed expansion came out in April.)
While the focus has been on the supposed economic benefits of Deluce’s plan, less time has been spent calculating the costs to the waterfront. Or the billions in public funds already poured into parks, beaches and public spaces along the water’s edge. To say nothing of the 300-plus-hectare Toronto Island park.
Air Canada VP Derek Vanstone calls Porter’s proposal “a play to further entrench its ability to use the Toronto City Airport exclusively and to the exclusion of others.”
Vanstone says any decision by council to approve Porter’s request “should be subject to review by the Competition Bureau.”
He calls Porter’s “pursuing policy changes and infrastructure improvements for its sole enjoyment unprecedented [and] inconsistent with internationally accepted airport management practices and governance. That’s why no airport in the world operates in this manner.”
In its submission to council, Boeing takes issue with Porter’s tying its expansion plans to the purchase of Bombardier CS100s.
Boeing VP Bill Glover points out that the World Trade Organization’s Agreement On Trade In Civil Aircraft precludes “inducements of any kind to the sale or purchase of civil aircraft from any particular source which could create discrimination against [other] suppliers.”
But Deluce has an old friend in his corner should he encounter too much turbulence.
Lisa Raitt, the former TPA CEO and current Halton MP, has recently been promoted to Transportation Minister by the PM. Some in Ottawa political circles are whispering her name as a possible replacement for Harper. It was Raitt who was part of the sweetheart settlement with the feds that gave Deluce the seed money for his airline dreams. His blue-skying may not be over yet.
enzom@nowtoronto.com | @enzodimatteo
