Since the Ford Government’s tabling of Bill 110, the Building Billy Bishop Airport Act, its opponents have focused on the issues of air and noise pollution that would be caused by expanding the airport, the incompatibility of an expanded airport with residential and recreational uses of the waterfront, and the attack on local democracy from forcibly replacing the City of Toronto in the tripartite agreement about governance of the airport. Though all three of these issues are compelling, I will focus on two others that are encapsulated in my title.

What Nieuport Aviation Won’t Say

The terminal at the airport is owned and operated by Nieuport Aviation. What is Nieuport Aviation? On its website, Nieuport Aviation describes itself vaguely as “backed by significant international expertise in managing aviation infrastructure.” Its LinkedIn entry is somewhat more explicit, saying “We are owned by institutional investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which are core infrastructure investors with a long-term investment horizon and ongoing access to capital, including investments on behalf of millions of Ontario and Canadian families.” Though the website doesn’t say it, J.P. Morgan Asset Management doesn’t only advise institutional investors, rather it controls Nieuport Aviation. This is evident in the biographies of Nieuport’s seven directors. Jennifer Quinn, who is Canadian, is described as Nieuport’s CEO. Hai-Gai Li, a J.P. Morgan executive originally from Hong Kong, is described as “primarily responsible for the day-to-day management of [Nieuport Aviation].” So, who’s in charge at Nieuport?

Because Nieuport is a private entity, its financial records aren’t public. We don’t know what its revenues, costs, and profit currently are, nor do we know what they are projected to be if the airport is expanded. Because we don’t know how much of Nieuport’s investment pool is Canadian money, we don’t know how much of the current or anticipated profit stays in Canada or is transferred to overseas investors. Instead, it publishes feel-good impact reports that discuss environmental impact, community engagement, DEI, and the indigenous community – just about everything except what really matters to investors.

The Ontario PC Party has a troubling record of inviting overseas investment in Ontario infrastructure on terms that aren’t favourable to Ontarians. The Spa at Ontario Place will be owned and operated by Therme, a somewhat shadowy owner-operator of European spas. Going back farther, Highway 407 was developed as an electronic toll road by the Ontario Transportation Capital Corporation, but the highway and technology were privatized to a consortium led by the Spanish infrastructure and transportation conglomerate Gruppo Ferrovial. (Personal disclosure: I was a Director of the Ontario Transportation Capital Corporation between 1995 and 1998, when the board was disbanded before the privatization.)

The debate about whether to expand Billy Bishop or, on the other hand, to convert it to parkland must consider the question of continued foreign ownership of, and profit, from a major piece of Ontario infrastructure.

What Doug Ford Won’t Do

What the Ford Government won’t do regarding its proposal for a major expansion of Billy Bishop Airport is an independent policy or investment analysis. The government’s justification for the proposal is simply a cut-and-paste from advocacy reports underwritten and lobbying undertaken by Nieuport. Unfortunately, this is no different from the Ford Government’s approach to other policy areas, such as the absence of any policy analysis regarding the removal of bicycle lanes in Toronto. I suggest the Ford Government’s problem is Doug Ford himself: an intellectually uncurious person whose policy thinking is advised by formal public opinion polling and the informal sample of public opinion that, until recently, landed at 647-612-3673, his personal cellphone. (The Ford Government’s recent omnibus budget legislation now shields Ford’s cellphone records from Freedom of Information requests.)

The question of what to do about Billy Bishop Airport is serious and complicated and demands serious policy analysis. It would involve analysis of the aviation capacity of both Billy Bishop and Pearson Airports, of the travel preferences and ground access costs of aviation passengers into and out of Toronto, of the environmental impacts (at a minimum noise and air pollution) of increased traffic at both Billy Bishop and Pearson, and of the appropriate mix of transportation, housing, and recreational infrastructure on the Toronto waterfront.

Doug Ford has justified the expansion of Billy Bishop and his other plans for the Toronto waterfront with a story about a US businessman who flies into Bishop and then goes to a conference at the imagined waterfront conference centre, while the wife and kids visit the Science Centre and Spa at Ontario Place. That’s just a story. What Torontonians need now is serious policy analysis to advise serious decisions about how to develop the waterfront.

Credit Where Credit is Due: I acknowledge consulting Robert Cytowski’s submission to the Ontario Legislature regarding Bill 110 in preparing this post.