The awful smell from Toronto’s waterfront last week wasn’t the polluted water, but the suspicious details of the behind-the-scenes deal that has delivered a $35 million payout for a $22 million bridge that was cancelled.
The bridge-that-never-was was supposed to span a few metres across the channel to link Toronto’s island airport with the downtown. Bridge boosters had hoped that a new fixed link would goose up business for the money-losing airport. But Toronto residents have said “no” and “no” again to the plans by the undemocratic Toronto Port Authority for the expansion, so financial compensation to pay for the decision to stop the bridge was engineered.
Part of the extremely generous compensation package ($20 million) appears to be a back-door (and therefore illegal) subsidy to the newly-formed airline that has started flights from the island airport. It’s bad enough that taxpayers are giving secret handouts to businesses (which appears to be a clear contravention of the federal legislation governing the waterfront), but this particular business will spew cancer-causing pollutants across the downtown if it is allowed to continue.
Why would an airline get such a generous subsidy?
Why are taxpayers being forced to back a private airline company?
Why all the secrecy, if it’s such a good deal?
Toronto’s island airport deserves to be shut down. That’s been the consistent message for years – a message that the rogue agents at the Toronto Port Authority have ignored for years.
Imagine all the good things that the $35 million could have bought for the people of Toronto. Make a list, then cross all the items off because not of a penny of that money will benefit the people of Toronto. And our waterfront will continue to get a whole lot less liveable.
- Michael Shapcott
John Spragge said
Let’s start with the two obvious problems:
1) The “consistent message” comes mainly from a small minority, including some of the most pampered and coddled people on the planet. During the past election, David Miller did not call for the closure of Toronto City Centre Airport. Even if we accorded the residents of Toronto the sole authority over assets, and a transport network, owned by the citizens of Canada, neither the city council nor the voters of Toronto have made that request.
2) Toronto has to have a reliever airport, just as a matter of straight physics. Pearson cannot reliably handle the basic medical traffic this city needs to accept. Buttonville won’t exist five years from now. That leaves Pickering Airport. Pickering Airport would take a minimum of $300 million to build the first phase. If you want to close Toronto City Centre Airport, take a look at the Toronto budget, and figure out what cutting $300 million out of it would do.