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Port Authority’s Island airport expansion distraction

In a magic act, bringing the trick to a successful conclusion requires drawing the audience’s attention away from where the action really is. It’s called misdirection, and the Toronto Port Authority (TPA) seems to have adopted the technique in its campaign to push through Porter Airlines’ proposal to extend the runway and fly commercial jets in and out of the Island airport.

At a December 9 meeting hosted by the TPA at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and attended by about 500 people, opponents of airport expansion weighed in on the direction of the environmental assessment of the proposal and areas of investigation it should cover. The crowd raised literally dozens of issues, all duly recorded by the meeting facilitation team.

Unfortunately, as all this was taking place, three facts quietly emerged that suggest the whole exercise may be a waste of time and energy.

First, although city council requested the environmental assessment, it’s being paid for by the Port Authority. 

At the meeting, Paul Murray of AECOM, the company the TPA hired to carry out the assessment, insisted that he and his people would never allow their professional neutrality to be compromised. The fact remains, however, that when an organization like the TPA spends an estimated $1.25 million on a study, as is the case here, the resulting report is likely to contain the conclusions it wants to see.

More to the point, the EA is non-binding. It’s being done solely to “inform discussion,” in the words of the TPA. Indeed, it was explicitly stated during the meeting that the decision on whether to act on any recommendations of the assessment will rest solely with the TPA. 

But third, and most importantly, the federal government is about to make the TPA considerably more powerful, thanks to an item buried in an omnibus bill now before the House of Commons. 

Ostensibly a piece of budget legislation, C-43 is actually an omnibus bill that, once it goes into effect, will give Port Authorities new powers to acquire and lease federal land, and local authorities such as the city of Toronto will be unable to enforce zoning or other restrictions. 

For those around the Island airport, the implications are clear. Little Norway Park, where the TPA owns a right of way the Canada Malting silos, where the TPA has long wanted to build a parking garage (in fact, it believes it has an agreement with the city to put a 400-vehicle covered parking lot there) and vast tracts in the port lands are all federally owned.

So why is the TPA spending time and money on public consultations over an environmental assessment that is almost certainly pointless?

One answer is that, as in a magic act, it’s an excellent way to divert the opposition’s attention from what’s going on behind closed doors at City Hall and in Ottawa, where Porter Airlines’ multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign continues.

Another public consultation on airport expansion is scheduled for late January 2015.    

news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto

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