This is your captain speaking: Doug Ford bent on bringing jets to island airport

Premier Doug Ford says the province will take over the City of Toronto’s stake in Billy Bishop Airport, clearing the path for larger planes on the island.

“This is a crown jewel,” Ford said of Billy Bishop. “We need this. We need this desperately.”

Lots of details still need to be ironed out, but Ford insists that jets are coming "one way or another."

Buckle your seat belts.

Joining us on tonight's Closer Look podcast to talk about Ford's plan is Aidan Chamandy, one of our reporters at TorontoToday.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The kind of thinking is that Toronto is one of the biggest cities in North America. It only has one major airport in Pearson, which is very far from the downtown core, very difficult to get into the downtown core. And Billy Bishop kind of solves all of those problems.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Lots of projects. It's almost like he wants that to be his legacy.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

It sure sure feels that way. It feels like every day, right? Whether it's and I'm not the expert following with the Science Center, the Metro Toronto Convention Center, the Ontario Place renovations. What about the island that isn't an island? Yeah, the fill.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

And now there's talk about landing jets at Billy Bishop.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, that's the big talk this week. And I guess the him and his uh late brother Rob Ford talked about this a lot about expanding the island airport. And now that Doug is the premier, he's brought that back up, was talked about it in a scrum this week about how they're gonna make it happen one way or another. They're gonna expropriate Toronto's share in that property. It's fascinating because Billy Bishop is one of those amazing things. It is. I don't know another city that has an airport like that. Major city that has an airport. It's a great airport. There was a there was a time in my life where I was flying and I felt like every day, and I was living at that airport, and I was coming in and out of there. First when they had the ferry going across. And then I literally watched that whole tunnel be built. And it was a it was a an engineering miracle in my mind. That you can put a tunnel under a body of water like that. And every time I landed or took off, I'd walk over top of it and look down, and they'd be you know doing more and more. And they dug really deep. It was amazing. It sounded like Donald Trump talking about the biggest hole I've ever seen. Anyways, uh the and and you know, and the the the the charm of it, I think, was that these jets weren't huge jets. They were like the I don't know what the right term but what kind of plane was. Q400s? Q40s, yeah. And then Air Canada flies their Dash eights out of there or something like that. Um You know, and it's really cool you come into the city and you see all the big skyscrapers as you come in. It's beautiful. It's wild. Yeah. And you always did kind of feel like you're really close to the buildings, too. It's like, wow, you're you're really tight and you wonder if you could fit bigger jets. And of course, people who live down there, they've known that they've lived they've lived down there for a long time. There's always been an airport. But the idea of bringing in and we don't know what size jets yet, but bringing in big, you know, 300 passenger people passenger jets, that's a big difference. And I bet a lot noisier, I would assume. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: A lot noisier, and uh if I'm the pilot, I'm double checking my brakes. Yeah. So you can imagine there's a lot of complications and a lot of details in how this would actually work, how the expropriation would work, the the things that would have to be done to the property to accommodate bigger jets, what the flight paths would be. And who better to talk about it than uh a guy who's already been digging into all these issues? Aiden Shimandy, he's one of our reporters at Toronto Today, used to work at the Trillium. We've had him on uh many times. He's he's always doing really interesting stories. But it's been a while since I'm looking forward to talking to him.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

For decades, Billy Bishop Airport has been the subject of a tug of war between those who see it as a vital economic engine and those who see it as an intrusion on Toronto's waterfront. Now, Premier Doug Ford is making a bold move by announcing that the province will take over the City of Toronto stake in Billy Bishop Airport, a step that could clear the way for larger planes, more passengers, and help to relieve pressure on Pearson International Airport. But critics, including Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, say bringing jets to the waterfront would mean more noise, more congestion, and could violate long-standing agreements governing the airport to break it all down, including the implications of this move, is Aiden Shamandi, our reporter from Toronto today, who's been covering this story. Aiden, good to see you. Welcome to Closer Look. Thanks for having me again, guys. Uh, okay, Aiden, uh, has Ford brought this up before, or is this the first time that he's talked about uh expropriating the land?

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Uh no, this is a long-standing interest going back decades to you know the Ford's kind of heyday on city council, even as far back as 15 plus years.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

All right, Aiden, what's the rationale here then? What's driving this push or flying it, I guess is the right word?

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Well, Pearson uh is not exactly a popular airport. Uh people complain about it all the time. It's jammed. And uh Billy Bishop is right on the waterfront close to downtown. It is an airport that political officials use all the time. Whenever we get freedom of information requests back showing uh political figures travel, they're always flying out of the airport. And the kind of thinking is that Toronto is one of the biggest cities in North America. It only has one major airport in Pearson, which is very far from the downtown core, very difficult to get into the downtown core. And Billy Bishop kind of solves all of those problems.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Can we kind of go through the expropriation a little bit here, Aiden? Because I've heard obviously governments expropriate land all the time, but I don't think we've ever heard of an expropriation of a a portion, like an uh an ownership stake in the land, because others are uh own this land as well. Is that is it going to be simple for the Ford government to do that?

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Uh so the city owns about 20% of the land that the island airport is on. And I mean, given kind of Canada's constitution and you know, cities are creatures of the province, the province does have a lot of powers here. So there is the existing appropriate expropriations act, but the province can kind of pass a bill allowing them to do whatever they want if they don't think that the existing legislation kind of gives them all of the powers that they want. The kind of added complication here, and uh this, you know, comment might be obsolete in a day because it's a fast-moving file. We don't have a lot of details, it's just really going off what the pre what the premier says is it's one thing to uh have the city own part of the land. It's another thing for the city to be actually part of the tripartite agreement between the Port Authority and the federal government. So it's kind of an open question right now based on early conversations that I've been having with folks kind of in and around the space as to whether even if the city no longer owns the land, do they still kind of have some legal claim to the city, given that they are a signatory to the tripartite agreement, which the province is not?

SPEAKER_01 6:21

That makes sense. That's what's confused me, is uh your coverage has been great, but that's what I wondered as well. Like there's more to it than just taking the land to put a highway in, for example, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Because they're like it's the land and it's the legal document governing it.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Aiden, can Billy Bishop actually accommodate these big passenger jets that Ford wants to fly in there?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Uh yes, with a caveat. So the airport as it exists cannot, but there have been plans going back again like decades to expand the airport. Uh in fall 2024, there was an item that came to City Council where the uh the airport was talking about kind of three scenarios for expansion. There has to be a small expansion by 2027 to comply with federal safety standards, but that's just really extending the runways a little bit. But as part of that process, the airport came and said, okay, if we want to do this little expansion to comply with federal safety standards, we can do that. It'll cost this much. But we can also do a larger expansion or a much larger expansion, and that much larger expansion would allow for the accommodation of larger jets.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Would that mean more fill? Like we've heard with the uh what is it, the Kaveggy said? Like, would they actually have to build the island bigger?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Uh, as far as I understand it, yeah, it would require like more runway. Not necessarily, not necessarily like more kind of because the runway, the the the airport is connected to the Toronto Island. So it doesn't necessarily mean expanding, like, you know, the kind of public part of the island or whatnot, but it's more runway. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Has anyone looked at idea of just filling the whole lake? Just, you know, we'll do that'll do it. It seems like we're almost getting to the wouldn't that just be easier, Aiden?

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Well, the uh the Toronto Islands, actually, interestingly enough, was just a peninsula back in like 1850, but there was a huge storm that knocked out part of the uh uh part of like the peninsula connecting it. So I mean, you could do that, but you know, nature has its own ideas.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

That's the headline. Aiden Shimandy says you could do that. Still Lake Ontario. They're lucky. Thanks for joining us, Aiden. We appreciate it. No, I'm just kidding. Um there's all the talk of, you know, obviously of the noise from these planes, and I'm that's what's really people uh upset, obviously. I've flown in there, we've all flown in there lots of times. I lived in Toronto for a long time. I can't imagine the difference between what's flying in there now and like say a big Boeing 747 or whatever that would fit in there coming in. In terms of that, we know that you can't really fight the expropriation. There's not much you can do on the books in terms of legalities, but in terms of fighting this push to get bigger jets, what are the people who oppose to it doing?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

So uh again, it's it's early days, but there's a um uh there's an old group called No Jets TO that was very active in kind of the the early 2010s when this was uh when this was last kind of spiking at council. They've revived themselves. Um one interesting thing that we haven't really heard is the federal liberal MPs position on this, considering like this when this is hot during an election time, like this is kind of the only thing that people downtown talk about. And there are by-elections going on right now. There's one in uh Scarborough Southwest, which is a little bit east, but is would be in the flight path. Yes, that's right. So yeah, so I imagine this is something that will be brought up uh as part of that political process. The other interesting thing, which again, we don't really have an answer to, is um, you know, we don't exactly know what kind of planes the premier is envisioning here. And the specific type of plane would, you know, have a different noise profile. The other thing a specific type of plane might have is a different flight path. So on the eastern edge of the island is where these a lot of these things would be coming in. But the city just has uh just put forward plans for a massive development on another kind of stretch of infill island that would be along the flight path. And the open question is if jets come to the island, would the flight path affect the building heights that are planned for this massive development? It seems like they would right now. There are currently plans to have as high as I believe 45-story towers in a place called uh Villiers Island. And those would need to be chopped down if uh if jets come. And then even further east, you have uh what's called a transit-oriented community development. It's a big provincial housing plan to put tall towers near their new subway stations on the Ontario line. Still an open question as to whether the potential flight path would affect the building heights plan for there. So, you know, kind of Ford's plan for bringing jets to an island could affect Ford's plans for housing further east in Toronto.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

That's fascinating. That's why uh Aidan covers City Hall for us. You got all the angles covered. That's fascinating, too. We are jumping ahead, but I assume that would involve some compensation, but developers already got approval to build this development and then it has to get chopped down. Someone's got to pay that developer, I would assume.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Uh, one would imagine province can indemnify itself from certain things, but uh, you know, I think it's kind of one thing for the province to piss off the Villiers Island people because that is not necessarily the development that the province has a stake in. That is a city-led development with some federal money. But the East Harbor thing, that is a completely provincial-led uh process. So that would be, you know, kind of angering people that you had previously made a deal with. But the problem is it's so early days. There are no solid planes. We don't know anything around the flight path, the building heights, the length of the runway, what kind of jets will come, the noise profile, the type of noise it is, whether it's kind of like a propeller noise or a more standard kind of jet engine wine, what we would need to do at the foot of Bathurst Street where the entrance to the airport is to accommodate the uh the additional traffic. It is just open question, open season right now.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Aiden, let's uh get back to the opposition uh for a second. The premier has suggested that a quote, very, very few amount of people are standing in the way. Who is he referring to? Now, we do know that uh Mayor Olivia Chow uh has drawn a clear line saying she doesn't support jets at the airport, but who else is on that supposed short list?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

So as civil society groups like the Snow Jets, TO and a lot of the people who live uh at the waterfront in, I believe, 2014, and again, this has come to council so many times. In 2014, there was a study that the city conducted, and the people who live near the water were the ones who were most opposed. It was actually fairly, fairly evenly split when you look at the whole city of Toronto in terms of would you welcome jets on the island, do you not welcome jets on the island? But if folks downtown are really opposed, then their counselors, I assume, would be pretty opposed. But if the city doesn't really have a say, then what the counselors want wouldn't really matter. But the premier has also suggested that as population has turned over in those key areas since kind of the last time this was really hot in 2014, the kind of younger, more upwardly mobile folks in these new areas like Liberty Village and City Place, where these people primarily live in high rises and are, you know, younger urban professionals, they would be more amenable to jets island on the island because it kind of serves them because they would be traveling for these shorter, longer haul flights and it'd be right there. Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

What's the current feeling of people who live downtown, especially in the condos that are right by the airport, about the current traffic, like just the porter and the Air Canada flights that go in and out of there?

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Uh I personally don't hear too many complaints because it's just got like if you've moved there in the re in the last like 10, 15 or so years where in a lot of these developments have gone up, this was a known quantity when you were moving in, right? But the just getting back to the opposition question, the other thing is because this is like the island airport and it is connected to the Toronto Islands, um, there's uh there's actually a little a little slice of uh beach called Hanlon's Point, which is uh like a uh kind of really popular uh nude beach. Uh it's frequented by folks in the gay community, and this is something that they've been very protective of Hanlon's Beach in the past, and this uh this um airport would, depending on how it is expanded, potentially affect them. So that's just kind of like another civil society group that I would expect pushback from, but haven't heard anything from yet.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

This is maybe an unfair question, but in terms of legal challenges, could you foresee any down the road?

SPEAKER_00 14:19

It depends. I don't necessarily know at the moment who would file a legal challenge because I mean, like if the city's opposed to it, it's like, okay, do you want to fight the province on this, or do you just want to like stand down and you know, maybe get some compensation? Um people sue over everything, right? Like the amount of uh the amount of suits that have been filed over the Ontario place thing, despite the province's kind of like clear legislative power to do that, is it doesn't stop people. But one one sorry one very interesting thing to watch will be is the the premier has said that the city will get compensated for the land. So, you know, the city owns 20% of the land. They also get about five million dollars per year through property taxes and like a per passenger levy uh that they that they charge to the airport. I don't know how much that land is worth. I don't know the last time the city did uh an appraisal of that land, and I don't know how much that land would be worth. Presuming jets are going to come there, I assume it would be much higher. So that's an open question as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

But in my experience with expropriation stories, is that someone will have to do that fair market value assessment in order to see how much the province is going to pay for that land. So that will be part of the public process. That'll be interesting to see what they come up with. There'd be multiple appraisers from my experience that would go in and do it.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, again, it gets back to the political question of how much is the like if the city, if the mayor wants to fight this, then you would take a maximalist approach to the expropriation thing, saying, oh, it's worth$100 billion. We need$100 billion from the province. But if you don't want to pick a fight with the premier heading into an election year, when you're trying to negotiate more transit funding, more shelter funding, more funding to make the city operate on a day-to-day basis. This might not be the one you want to pick, but who knows? It might be a good political calculus.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

That's a great point. That's why you're so good at what you do, Aiden, because there's some leverage here too, right? They're gonna the city can get some stuff out of the province if the province really wants this quitable land, right? That's the way it works.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We saw that with uh partially, at least with uh Ontario Place. You know, in the 2023 trip Toronto mayoral by-election, Olivia Chow was saying, I'm gonna fight like hell to preserve Ontario Place and prevent the province from bringing the uh the big spa down there. And then she relented and she got this thing. Uh, I don't know how many viewers would know, it's called the called the new deal. It was like a multi-billion dollar deal where the province agreed to take the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardner Expressway off the city books. Uh, they would pay for the you know maintenance upkeep of that. Uh, they give gave the city some transit funding and whatnot. And the Gardner and the DVP were absolute trains on the city budget. So getting those, uh getting a province to take care of those has been a massive financial windfall to the city.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

That's a great point. Okay, in the immediate term, what's the next step to the story that you'll be looking for?

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Uh, some kind of solid plan from the the province. Um, I don't exactly know when we will get that because it does seem to be very early stages, given that you know, these are kind of not like wholly off-the-cuff remarks from the premier, but we don't have the minister of transportation at these press conferences saying uh, you know, X, Y, or Z. And then also the federal response, because we've been talking city-province this entire time. The federal government is a partner in the tripartite agreement. When there was talk about expansion uh, you know, about 10 years ago, the Trudeau government firmly came down saying no expansion. That was an important kind of policy uh promise that they made in the 2015 election that helped uh deliver them downtown parts of downtown Toronto. Um, so given that there is there are by-elections going on nearby currently, I would expect that those questions will be asked and you know the prime minute people will ask the prime minister or the transport minister to pronounce on those. But I believe it was last Monday recently, there was a press conference with the federal transportation minister, and he did not want to get into it because it doesn't seem like this is something that is on the federal government's radar, uh, like at least to a big degree right now, because it is a kind of a provincially driven process right now. But we we do need to see we need input from the feds.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Yeah, Premier Ford has a way of putting things on other people's radar, doesn't he? It makes my job fun. That's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

Call that uh job security. That's right. I think anything, uh anything we didn't cover about uh the airport or anything else you want to bring up before we let you go?

SPEAKER_00 18:29

I think we covered like the the federal angle, um, the flight path. Uh I am literally just like going through my mind here. I think the flight path thing is is really a big thing. That's not really something that's got a ton of conversation right now. I'm working on a number of stories on it right now. Uh so I don't want to I don't want to scoot myself. No, no, stay tuned. Yeah, yeah. Real real early days, too, too hard to tell.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

All right. Uh we would be remiss in bringing this up because you we haven't chatted for a long time. Uh, probably next to Derek, you're one of the biggest Leaf fans across village. You're Brad Treleving for a day. What's one move you're making? Resigning.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

No hesitation.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

No, I actually know. I would I don't know if I would fire Barube first and then resign because as much as I dislike our current coach, I think he's doing a fantastic job of being a tank commander, and we absolutely need to get a top five pick because we are an absolute shambles. So I would probably keep him on, resign, uh, and never pipe up again.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Is it more painful to see the Habs doing so well while you guys are doing so poorly?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

No, because they are a now very well-run organization that doesn't just like recycle the 200 hockey men at the top of their organization. They brought in a player agent to be their GM. He's done fantastic. So I have friends who are Habs fans. I am happy for them. It's not like I hate the Leafs more than I hate the Habs and on the Leafs. That's how this works. That's great.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Well said, uh Aiden. We won't uh quite plan the parade uh just yet. Uh from Toronto today, there's Aiden Schumanity. Thanks for this, Aiden. Thank you guys. We gotta have uh Aiden on more regularly because not only is he good at what he's great at what he does, but he can explain things that a person like me can a lay person can understand.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

You know what I mean? That's the brilliance of yeah, he's really good at at taking a complicated story. And he does tackle so many complicated stories. I think in we had him on last year, the year before, talking about this big project he did on hallway healthcare. Yes. Where he found out how bad it was in each hospital Ontario based on FOI requests, put together a database, and reached out to all these hospitals. I mean, it was a fantastic project. And I don't want to say he does it with ease because it takes a lot of effort, but he does understand exactly what his mission is in terms of bid of finding where the germ where the news is. Right. And that that's it that's it's a hard thing to do because they don't the the uh organizations and governments don't just put that out there and say, okay, everybody, here it is, boom, with big flashing lights. He's digging in and finding it. And so I can only imagine what he's gonna come up with about the flight paths, as he mentioned.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

You can't teach that stuff, even when you have a good teacher like that.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

No, no, I can't. He's way better than me.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

All right, uh, that's it for us tonight. Closer look at villagemedia.ca. What do you think about big jets flying into Billy Bishop? Let us know. We'd love to hear from you. For Derek Turner, executive producer of uh tonight's program, Michael Friscolandi's our editor-in-chief here at Village Media. I'm Scott Sexmith. Uh, have a great night. Thanks for your time. We'll see you tomorrow night at seven, right here on Closer Look. Frisco and Scott's wardrobe, provided in part by Moore's Sault Ste. Marie.