“I almost wish I hadn’t gone down the rabbit-hole…and yet…and yet”
Alice in Wonderland
I should have realized that, in this day and age, it doesn’t take much to bring out the conspiracy theorists but that’s exactly what my recent posting “Missing Aviation Capacity”, has done.
Thanks to a recent freedom of information request, we now know that a study commissioned by Transport Canada on Southern Ontario Aviation Capacity has disappeared. The public will never see the study’s recommendations on when or if Pickering Airport should be built. The question is why? Why did four MPs including Transport Minister Anita Anand hold a press conference to make the grandiose announcement that Pickering Airport was cancelled? Without supporting facts, reason or a plan to build badly needed new aviation infrastructure elsewhere.
Cancelling Pickering Airport will require rescinding the PASZR (Pickering Airport Site Zoning Regulations). With parliament prorogued, the federal Liberal party in the middle of a leadership race and an election call only weeks away, the timing of this announcement seems nonsensical. Rescinding a law requires an act of parliament and two months after the announcement the PASRZ law is still on the books. Meaning the airport has not been cancelled. What did happen was a promise by a minister to cancel badly needed infrastructure expected to be built by private investors. After the election, a new government and parliament can ignore this oddly timed promise.
Enter the conspiracy theories. Each a guess created inside online chat groups and other closed social media discussions then shared with yours truly. Each one is a hypothesis tested in the finest traditions of “social media science” to discover the truth. Pilots seem especially capable in this new, not very scientific, method. Often believing that we can follow the money to find out what is going on.
I thought I’d share a few of the more popular theories I have received. So, enjoy, laugh, cry or just shake your head starting with the one standing head and shoulders above the rest.
Conspiracy Theory #1: GTAA Bonds values are behind it all!
It starts by assuming the missing study would build on previous independent reports that have stated that new aviation capacity is needed in the Toronto area. This includes recommending that a new airport be built in Pickering at some point. Up to now Pickering Airport has been a “sometime in the future” event. Not something that moves the risk needle much for investors in the multi-billion-dollar bond float at the GTAA (Greater Toronto Airport Authority). But what if the new report went one step further and said the obvious? It is time to build Pickering Airport.
The majority of the GTAA bondholders are believed to be Canadian and Quebec Pension funds. The pension fund lenders to the GTAA have based their risk analysis on Pearson Airport (the only airport operated by the GTAA) being an ongoing monopoly without any long-term competition. This is stated directly in the bond offerings’ credit rating. The GTAA Standard and Poors credit report states the obvious, that the GTAA is a monopoly with a stranglehold on air travel for one in six Canadians. This lack of competition enables the GTAA to set some of the highest fees in North America.
To quote the GTAAs Standard and Poors credit report:
“The authority’s monopoly position in delivering an essential transportation service together with its unencumbered rate-setting autonomy” is listed as a core reason of its sterling A credit rating.
For those who believe in this line of reasoning, maybe it puts a new view on why Billy Bishop Airport has been struggling to get federal approval to extend its runway or why the city blocked the construction of a bridge. Some believe this is why Buttonville was purchased and then shut down despite being profitable (by Cadillac Fairview, the development arm of the Teachers Pension Plan). Scarcity is a profitable business model only if you are a monopoly.
If a federal report suggested that a competitor (Pickering Airport) was required now, this would increase the market risk, lower the credit rating and value of the GTAA bonds. This increased risk can lower the value of the bonds. It will increase the cost of future bond offerings by the GTAA.
This can be resolved by the federal government stepping in to buy these bonds but why should they? It can be resolved by the Federal Government directly by helping the GTAA with federal financing. But even during the covid lockdown, the federal Liberal government declined to do so.
Did a large bond Investor or a trader influence individual federal politicians to stop the airport? Was insider trading a motivation for the announcement? GTAA Bond values did jump just before and after the announcement.
Perhaps the bond investors are banking on a liberal victory in the current federal election or hoping to just buy time to resell the bonds. Is it this easy to “influence” a select few in government to kill a report and the airport it is recommending?
One version of this conspiracy theory has the report magically resurfacing with a recommendation that the airport be built immediately. All part of some sort of “Pump and Dump” trading strategy or a setup to create a scandal for the current government.
Conspiracy Theory #2 – Land Goblins
Who else could benefit from the cancellation of the Pickering Airport? Most of the airport lands will be dedicated to Rouge National Urban Park but not all of it. What becomes of the extra few thousand acres? At one million dollars an acre in Toronto’s hot real-estate market, this is a billion-dollar prize.
Once the airport is cancelled the government can decide on what to do with these other lands. What unnamed groups were active behind the scenes? NGOs? Special Interest Groups? Long-term loyal Liberal supporters? A golf club and other businesses currently lease the land for as little as $120 an acre a year. Or, how about land developers under the guise of building affordable housing?
Conspiracy Theory #3 – Foreign Influence
Foreign influence is at play! American/Russian/Saudi bogymen are out to stop Canada from developing the infrastructure it needs to connect our economy with the world. The theory goes that similar influence peddling has been undermining other major infrastructure projects from pipelines to ports so why not a new airport? Online bot farms, compromised MPs and local useful idiots are the tools these foreign bogeymen have been using. The goal is to undermine a strong and free Canada that threatens the interests of an authoritarian regime in America/Russia/Iran/China etc.
Conspiracy Theory #4: An Airport in Pickering Screws up the Government’s High-Speed Rail Messaging
The current government has created a Crown corporation to build High-Speed Rail (HSR) linking Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal and Quebec City. This HSR project is touted to reduce other modes of travel, both air and road between these cities.
Having an airport in Pickering would be seen as promoting air travel including to these same cities, so Pickering Airport had to go. The facts that additional airport capacity would be needed in the GTA, and the airport would serve a hundred other locations nationally and internationally couldn’t be allowed to interfere with the HSR message. As a bonus, the rapid growth being “hogged” by Toronto will now be encouraged to spread out to Ottawa and Montreal.
Air Canada is part of the successful HSR consortium. Seems odd at first but is in fact a very smart move. Air Canada has stated that it does not support expanding Billy Bishop Airport or building Pickering Airport. The theory is that they don’t want the competition, and they won’t want to operate from multiple major GTA commercial airports.
It makes sense that it is in Air Canada’s best interests to have anyone who wants to travel by air to do so through their Toronto Pearson fortress hub. Logically, a congested Pearson Airport will enable higher prices for both air and rail passenger tickets.
We posted a review of the HSR project here: Canada’s $90 Billion Dollar High-Speed Rail will be obsolete before it is complete.
To naysayers, HSR appears to be a blatant grand legacy project that will never pay its own way. Via Rail knew this back in 2016. VIA has been routinely criticized for aging infrastructure, poor on-time performance and ongoing subsidies. Their High-Frequency Rail (HFR) project, announced just two years ago in 2023, was a reasoned attempt to significantly improve passenger rail travel in eastern Canada with the potential to be achievable without government subsidies. Somehow this turned into HSR.
HSR, at a capital cost estimated at $90 billion, is five times the cost of HFR and will require grand ongoing subsidies from Canadian taxpayers for generations. This will never be politically sustainable if an air ticket on a for-profit airline is cheaper and faster than a train ticket to the same destination.
Conspiracy Theory #5: The bloodsport of Partisan Politics is alive and well!
Politics inside the federal Liberal party has been described as a blood sport. The Liberal MPs in the area surrounding the Pickering lands opposed the airport. The local MP, the grand dame for the airport opposition, has decided to not run in the next election. At the time of the announcement so had the then Minister of Transport Anita Anand. The new leader of the liberal party, Marc Carney, supports building new national transportation, especially infrastructure that can be built with private investors. Pickering airport is such a project. Was the promise to cancel the airport a race against time to create a dilemma for the new liberal leader?
Local special interest groups undermining the greater good is at the heart of Canadas infrastructure crisis.
Was this just an attempt to reward local liberal supporters by cancelling the airport? To set the field for those running for re-election? Done before a new leader of the federal Liberal party is chosen so he will not have to wear this decision? The fact that the airport isn’t really cancelled and that new aviation capacity will need to be built somewhere in the GTA will be a big problem for the next government. Was creating this dilemma the goal, or an unforeseen outcome?
How to resolve a crisis in confidence
All the above theories, along with others that keep rolling in, have one common theme. The loss of faith in good governance of Canada’s economy and major infrastructure. Can the disappearance or nonappearance of a highly anticipated government report really be explained by one or all of these theories? As the saying goes, money corrupts politics if it is given a dark corner to hide in. The more money at stake, the more corruption takes place.
These conspiracy scenarios highlight the need for the transparency of governance. They indicate an erosion of confidence in the federal government and Canada’s civil servants. It is unfairly hurting Transport Canada’s reputation. All caused by an odd announcement cancelling a major economic project for no apparent reason. Aggravated by a missing report.
One way to rebuild confidence is by providing the missing transparency. Create a national airport strategy encompassing all communities larger than 25,000 residents across Canada. A strategy based on a known set of rules protecting regional access to airport infrastructure for both businesses and travellers. An Infrastructure strategy supporting productivity, free market competition and good governance at a national level. A plan that needs to be hard for local for-profit influencers and the power of money to corrupt. A national plan where an aviation capacity study doesn’t just disappear because a select few billion-dollar investors didn’t like its results.
Release the missing report! And if there really isn’t one, then release the basis, in detail, supporting the decision to promise to cancel Pickering Airport.
References:
Pickering Airport Site Zoning Regulations
S&P affirms Greater Toronto Airports Auth ratings | Reuters
Related Posts:
Why stop Pickering Airports development now? – Friends of Pickering Airport
Southern Ontario Airport Capacity Study has Vanished! – Friends of Pickering Airport
New Canadian Airport Strategy can Beat Trump Tariffs – Friends of Pickering Airport
Why and how will the GTAA oppose Pickering airport? – Friends of Pickering Airport
KPMG Report Reaffirms Need for Pickering Airport – Friends of Pickering Airport
Attack of the McMansions – Friends of Pickering Airport