Volunteers communicating the need for Pickering Airport
By Mark Brooks How deep are the lobbyist hooks into the Pickering Airport Lands? The 9000 acres set aside for the new Pickering Airport and economic development near Toronto is an opportunity to create tens of thousands of jobs, hundreds of million in tax revenue and billions in economic activity. The new airport is expected […]
By Mark Brooks In October, 2020, the Member of Parliament for Pickering-Uxbridge, Jennifer O’Connell, sponsored an E-Petition in the House of Commons calling on the federal government to cancel a new airport being planned in North Pickering. It called for the existing leases on a billion-dollar government land parcel to be extended for decades to […]
What happens when a young reporter from the City meets a slick well-practiced “Rural” lobby group hunting for cheap leases on a Billion dollars of government land? It’s a classic scene with all the right virtue signalling of farming, the environment, and food security. A warm fuzzy setup covering the warts of a Big Money ask. […]
The recent release of a report from consulting firm KPMG, regarding when to build Pickering Airport, has Canadian political observers holding their breath. The report lays out why the Greater Toronto Area needs a new airport, states where it will be built, presents a business plan and when to break ground. The plan for construction […]
The recently released Land Over Landings ( LOL for short) “AG study”, is billed as a pathway to prosperity. But whose prosperity, why is LOL making this pitch, at what cost and who is paying? The why is simple enough, LOL is a lobby group for residents and a handful of tenant farmers privileged to […]
The town of Whitchurch-Stouffville made the national news recently when a bizarre “mind-map” was found on the mayor’s office washroom wall. Another strange event didn’t make the news but left some residents equally annoyed and wondering if there is something in the water at city hall. When the official town sponsored monthly paper called “On […]
The federal airport lands in Pickering, a billion dollar public land reserve just east of Toronto, are owned by the Canadian tax payer. For years It has been leased out on short term one year leases to commercial and tenant farmers. But now, there is a possibility, thanks to either a deliberate or unintentional […]
Land over landings (LOL for short) advertises itself as a grassroots agriculture and conservation group. On its web site, in the press, at every opportunity, it goes out of its way to broadcast that there is no business case for a new airport in Pickering. It attacks experts and politicians alike that dare […]
