Chris Selley: Doug Ford shows how not to get something built

Billy Bishop Airport on Toronto Island. Photo by Adobe Stock

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Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney essentially brought the hammer down: “Nope!”

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The Ford government’s case was never compelling. “By expanding capacity at Billy Bishop Airport, the province will help meet future demand in southern Ontario, reduce pressure at Toronto Pearson International Airport, increase competition in the air travel sector to support more routes and cheaper flights, and support the creation of good-paying jobs in Ontario’s aviation, tourism and construction sectors,” its press release burbled. Specifics were few and vague, allowing the idea’s opponents to flood the zone with many specific potential catastrophes: deafening noise, squinting coal-stained urchins wandering around as if in Wales in 1825, etc. 

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Construction jobs are a pretty lousy reason to build an airport or anything else. I’m not sure why it would have necessarily led to “more routes”: You can’t currently fly anywhere out of the Island Airport that you can’t from Pearson. And no short-haul wee-jet airport in downtown Toronto (you would never even see a Boeing 737 under this plan, never mind anything bigger) is going to remedy the fundamental factors that straitjacket competition in federally regulated industries like airlines. If politicians wanted to take on those fat-and-happy incumbents, they would. They don’t, even though many Canadians loathe those fat-and-happy incumbents. (In many countries, surely, this would be considered compelling circumstantial evidence of some sort of corruption.)

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Ford’s real killer defence of the idea, as it often has been during his career, is that it’s what “the people want.” He cited an internal poll, that showed 70 per cent support, but we weren’t permitted to see it. Public polling suggested it was more like 50/50. So now Ford is somewhat diminished, at a time when he can’t really afford it: Polls suggest his Tories could be neck-and-neck with a provincial Liberal party that doesn’t even have a leader. And Carney’s federal Liberals get to act like they acted purely on principle, though it mysteriously took weeks for them to do it. Nothing has gotten better in politics or at the Island Airport. Things might have gotten worse.

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As it stands, the airport is a cool little waterfront feature. But it is definitely losing some of its advantage. If you want to get from City Hall to the lounge by 5 p.m. on a weekday, which is 3.5 kilometres by road, Google Maps suggests you budget more than half an hour in a cab to lurch your way, bug-eyed, through downtown traffic.

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Public transit takes longer and isn’t very good, which is one of the airport’s little ironies. Reagan National Airport is served by two lines on the Washington Metro. London’s City Airport is served by the Docklands Light Railway, the Tube, and ferries that run up and down the Thames.