From where I sit, Doug Ford’s triumphalist yodelling this week about the Toronto Islands airport sounds much less like an expansion plan than a political wedge, inserted directly — and in a highly tactical way — into the emergent mayoral election, which officially kicks off in May.
The premier’s team in the past few days leaked Ford’s, um, strategy for the “crown jewel of the waterfront” as well as Nick Kouvalis’ polling research, both of which he subsequently confirmed, employing what has become a hallmark Trump tactic of putting words in the mouth of a counter-party from a private conversation.
As the Toronto Star reported, Ford said he informed Mayor Olivia Chow — who opposes jets — of his airport expansion plan in recent days during a “constructive conversation” at his Etobicoke home. In a separate press conference, the mayor reiterated her opposition to jets, but added, “We shall see as to what is the balance in the waterfront.”
We shall indeed. Ford claims the expansion will serve smaller jets, as if smaller jets will be any less disruptive to all the other activities taking place in and around the inner and outer harbours, among them the premier’s multi-billion dollar legacy schemes (Therme, the new Science Centre, and now, apparently, a convention centre the size of Newmarket.)
The key to unlocking the airport expansion, sayeth the Lord of Queen’s Park, will be expropriating Billy Bishop, which is owned by the City, and then, you know, making good on what it owes. The premier — who, according to The Globe and Mail, is apparently being lobbied by the U.S. private equity firm that bought the Billy Bishop terminal — also tucked some fake words into the mouth of his federal counterpart, claiming Ottawa will be good with his scheme. (The Liberal transportation minister Steve MacKinnon seems less amenable to jettisoning the City, at least for now.)
Before I get into the politics, here’s my question about the expropriation gambit. Yes, the province, by virtue of the division of powers set out in the British North America Act, has the constitutional right to do whatever it wants to municipal governments in general and the City of Toronto in particular.
But can a provincial government undo a formal deal between legal entities, two of which are federal? I’m not a lawyer so the answer is above my pay grade. However, the foundation of the airport’s very existence is a contract known as the Tripartite Agreement, which dates to 1983.
That contract, which traces back to 1937, is between the Corporation of the City of Toronto, the federal agency known as the Toronto Harbour Commission (aka Ports Toronto) and the Crown, via the federal Minister of Transportation. It’s been updated several times since, including in 2003, following the epic political fight over a proposed fixed link that brought David Miller to office. There are three signatures at the bottom, representing each of the parties to the contract. The current agreement expires in 2033, unless it is renewed.
It seems to me that while Queen’s Park does have the legal power to expropriate the airport lands, I’m much less clear on whether it has the authority to void a formal contract between three parties, and which didn’t arise from any kind of legislation or regulation that the province might now repeal.
In other words, would the act of expropriation nullify the Tripartite Agreement? Not for me to say, but someone should answer this question, and do so before this thing gets even more ludicrous. Maybe a question for a court to decide…?
Which brings me to the politics. I have no doubt there are real investor machinations behind Ford’s shock-and-ahhh convention centre. The Metro Convention Centre sits on extremely valuable and sought-after real estate. It is oddly configured, and certainly old, so if I found out that the government had been pitched on a new one, I wouldn’t be surprised. Nor would I be astonished to learn that the planning has bubbled along behind closed doors for a while now.
Not so with the airport. Kouvalis’ pushy poll asked, for example, how all Ontarians feel about an expanded facility, as well as Torontonians and 905ers. The survey suggests the Tories are marshalling a political argument that will either buttress subsequent investment decisions — something that didn’t happen with Ford’s other waterfront mega-projects — or inject some frisson into the mayoralty campaign.
We’ve yet to hear from candidate Brad Bradford on the future of the aforementioned crown jewel, but it’s worth noting that he strenuously objected to a contentious 2024 council decision to extend the Billy Bishop runways to comply with new federal safety standards. If he does come out in favour of Ford’s mini-jets, he’ll have to square that stance with his not-too-distant objections.
Mainly, though, I will be watching to see what Chow does next, especially because she, like other veterans of earlier expansion fights, knows perfectly well what’s involved in making the airport viable for jets: not just much longer runways, but also enormous and intrusive sound/heat deflectors that will jut way out into the inner harbour.
Chow, in her three years in office, has foregrounded her willingness to cut pragmatic deals with Ford in order to maintain a working relationship. Which is fair enough as a day-to-day MO, but surely there are red lines, and jets flying in and out of the island airport is certainly one of them.
The mayor obviously doesn’t love conflict. She managed to avoid taking out a strong stance on the bike lane fiasco because of CycleTO’s remarkably successful court challenge. But she folded when it came to Ontario Place and the mega-spa, defending the city’s evidently supine response as a legally inevitable component of a large fiscal trade-off (the cash-for-highways “new deal”).
I don’t think Ford’s gambit to scoop the airport lands and expand them for jets is legally inevitable, nor do I think Kouvalis’ polling tells us anything close to the whole story about public opinion. Chow’s job at this point — assuming she’s running for re-election — is to make it very clear to Torontonians what’s at stake, what’s involved with jet-capable runways, and whether the province is actually entitled to carry out what Ford claims he’s prepared to do.
As importantly, Chow has to do all this in her outside voice, for a change.
If the premier wants a wedge, which I think he does, it will be up to the mayor to pick a side and then argue like hell in favour of that position. The time for quiet understandings is over.
