August 22, 2024
Letter to: Mr. RJ Steenstra
President and CEO
Ports Toronto
Dear Mr. Steenstra,
I write on behalf of Parks not Planes.
I apologize for the length of this letter. There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed.
I was unable to attend your July meeting on Runway End Safety Areas (RESAs) but understand many of our members were present.
We have a number of comments and questions.
Scheduling a public meeting in the midst of the summer is not an ideal way to obtain community input or support.
Please provide us with the comprehensive planning study in 2023/24 you referred to in that meeting. Without that study, it would be impossible to comment on the issues in a fully informed way.
Please provide the cost estimates for each of the six scenarios considered in that study. We assume Ports Toronto will fully or partially fund this project from proceeds of its sale of 30 Bay Street ($96M) and the Parliament Slip ($20M, paid by Waterfront Toronto, another government agency). Both properties were acquired by Ports Toronto for free, and, were originally transferred, without charge, we understand, in 1911 to The Toronto Harbour Commission by the City of Toronto. We submit that Ports Toronto should not be free to spend those public funds without an appropriate public process for deciding on their use.
We submit that the most appropriate use of those $116M of public funds needs to be part of this discussion – there are many possible expenditures that have more merit than spending them on your Airport.
Missing from the six alternative scenarios Ports Toronto has advanced is a seventh – closing the airport.
We do appreciate that that is not an inquiry that Ports Toronto wishes to allow. But it must happen. But this 7th scenario must be seriously and thoroughly examined. Ports Toronto’s acquisition of the Airport lands was by the simple creation of a federal statute, and another statute can as easily convert the use of those lands to parkland. That alternative is not far‑fetched. Even the Globe and Mail’s highly‑regarded architecture critic has advanced it as a very attractive option.
As you are also seeking to enter into a new lease from the City as the current one expires in 2033, it would only be prudent to examine the question of whether that should happen.
Such an examination needs to consider what the best use should be for the valuable (some would say most valuable) 215 acres in our City and include extensive and robust public engagement.
The evidence we have seen suggests that the Airport’s business had been in significant decline even prior to COVID. Evaluating whether the Airport has a viable economic future should be part of any discussion on that seventh alternative.
To assist that debate, please provide daily and monthly passenger and flight data for the Airport going back to 2015.
While you do tout the Airport’s economic benefit to our City, your study does not ascertain just how much of that economic activity would simply move to Pearson, with no net loss to Toronto’s economy. Examination of that issue is a key part of the work necessary to effectively consider the continued existence of the Airport.
It is our view that your RESA project must undergo a full environmental assessment under the Impact Assessment Act. A “voluntary non‑statutory environmental assessment” is not acceptable, given the impact of this project on our waterfront.
We will be asking the Minister to so order.
As you will know, polling can be easily manipulated to obtain the desired results. Please provide the full set of questions asked in the polls you are publicizing, and full details of the polling process, so that the public may consider whether the results have been skewed in any way.
It is our view that any consent from the City for the extension of runway end land mass should have these conditions: The Airport pays Payment in Lieu of Taxes for all its lands to the City on the same basis as any other property taxpayer. The Federal Court of Canada, on this precise issue, in City of Toronto v. Toronto Port Authority considered your preference for a “per passenger” fee and stated: "The TPA [Toronto Port Authority, the legal name for Ports Toronto] attempted to enjoy the benefits of [ a per‑passenger fee]. …The … legal error is compounded by the absence of any explanation as to the merits of the quantum of the per passenger amount."
"Therefore, the [per‑passenger fee] … is not sustainable as a matter of jurisdiction nor as a matter of reasonableness."[1]
The rent to be paid for the City’s lands must represent fair market rent ‑ to continue with a dollar‑a‑year (the current rent) would be a huge continuing direct subsidy from the city. As the Airport has a premium location, and your Airport’s air carriers do market its location as a major advantage in the marketplace, the rent should reflect that premium.
The lease should be enforceable – the current lease (the Tripartite Agreement – is unenforceable, and that has led to continuing breaches [2].
And as noted below, noise from the Q400 exceeds the maximums permitted on two of three measures.
Finally, we note your new website: safecleanquiet.ca for your Runway End Safety Area (RESA) project.
The words “safe”, “clean” and “quiet” are most definitely not descriptive of the Island Airport, and clearly fit the definition of greenwashing:
The Airport is NOT safe. In the absence of a vehicular bridge, the Airport does not meet minimum standards for emergency access, as set out in the March 1993 expert report that has never been updated or rebutted.
The then CEO of Toronto Port Authority recognized that when she said in a press release on October 16, 2003:
“The fixed link (bridge) is a public safety issue. In the event of an emergency, it could take up to two hours to get the appropriate equipment over to the island and that's not acceptable.”
It is also disturbing that you are operating an Airport without adequate runway end safety areas. The danger that their absence presents was illustrated by the Air France runway overshoot at Pearson in 2005, which fortunately did not result in any fatalities.,
Following that overshoot, the Transportation Safety Board recommended a 300 metre RESA in 2007. Nothing has been done to address that safety deficiency over all those years.
The Airport has no RESA currently – just ~100m of unused land at the ends of runway 08/26. You are only contemplating a 150 metre RESA. Overshoots are not rare: Transport Canada reports that over a 20-year period (1990-2010), there were 268 runway end excursion events; - 148 related to commercial passenger operations
It is fortunate that, to date, there have been no overshoots at the Airport. They could easily result in an aircraft entering the deep waters off the ends of the runway. By failing to implement adequate RESAs to date, you have placed your patrons at undue risk in the event of an overshoot.
The 1220‑meter runway is already shorter than the minimum required length stated by the Q400 manufacturer for take off (1,277m) and landing (1268m).
It is NOT clean. A recent study by experts from University of Toronto found worrisome levels of ultrafine particles coming from the aircraft using the Airport in the residential community just north of the Airport.
Another recent McGill University study, reported in the Globe and Mail: “Ultrafine particles linked to 1,100 deaths per year in Montreal, Toronto, found that a microscopic air pollutant generated from vehicles and industry plays a role in the deaths of an estimated 1,100 people in Canada’s two biggest cities each year
Your airport abuts a residential area, unlike most other airports, and the impact of its UFP emissions are therefore not diluted with distance, as they are elsewhere.
It is NOT quiet. Ports Toronto has admitted the Q400, the only aircraft flown out of the Airport commercially, breaches two of the three ceilings for noise:
Tripartite Agreement Compliance
Q402 | Tripartite | |
|---|---|---|
Flyover | 78 | 84 |
Lateral | 84 | 83.5 |
Approach | 93.1 | 92 |
Comparison of Q400 to Limits in Tripartite
As Tamara Bernstein, Artistic Director, Summer Music in the Toronto Music Garden, from 2001 to 2020, recently put it:
“The Toronto Music Garden is a magical venue, and a creation of genius on Toronto’s central waterfront. Its free concerts all summer long quickly became part of that magic – a glorious alchemy of place, music, and attentive, enthusiastic audiences."
“Unfortunately, that pleasure is blighted by the brutal noise of airplanes at Toronto Island Airport – noise that worsened over the years with the expansion of the airport facilities. “My Airport”? My *rse. Toronto’s magnificent waterfront is what should belong to everyone. It is no place for an airport.”
Why would you use such adjectives when they are provably false?
I look forward to your responses.
Brian Iler, Spokesperson, Parks not Planes
cc. Angela Homewood
[1] The City of Toronto successfully intervened in two cases in the Supreme Court of Canada:
In the first case, decided in 2010, Montréal (City) v. Montreal Port Authority, the Court stated:
“Parliament intended Crown corporations and managers of federal property to make payments in lieu on the basis of the existing tax system in each municipality, to the extent possible as if they were required to pay tax as owners or occupants.[para. 42]
“Thus, the purpose of the PILT Act is to establish a system of payments in lieu that reflects the actual tax situation in the places where federal property is located.” [para. 46]
In the second case, decided in 2012, the Court in Halifax (Regional Municipality) v. Canada (Public Works and Government Services) stated:
“Just as fairness to the Federal Crown demands that the Minister retain the discretion to come to his own opinion on property value, fairness to municipalities demands that the Minister’s opinion be informed by the tax system that would apply to the federal property in issue if it were taxable …
“But the Act is directed to fair and equitable PILTs with reference to what taxes would be payable if the site were taxable” …
“The Minister’s position is also at odds with the broader policy of the PILT Act, which is to treat municipalities fairly. It can hardly be thought either fair or equitable to conclude that 42 acres in the middle of a major metropolitan centre has no value for assessment purposes.
The City, having won at the Federal Court of Canada on this precise issue in 2010, and its property taxpayers are entitled to insist that Ports Toronto pay its fair and equitable share of property taxes (here, payments in lieu of taxes).
[2] Ports Toronto has ignored the protections put in place by the City to ensure the TPA’s Island Airport “can be used only as a .. permanent public airport for general aviation and … limited commercial STOL service operations – it is clear that the aircraft using the Island Airport for commercial passenger service are not ‘STOL’.
The Q400 used by Porter and Air Canada is a much larger aircraft than the Dash‑8 in existence when that aircraft was inserted as a permitted aircraft into the Tripartite Agreement. And as noted, the noise from the Q400 exceeds the maximums permitted on two of three measures of the Limits in Tripartite.
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