There’s been a lot of ballyhoo and hoopla down at the bottom of my street. It’s all about the airport across the water from me on the tip of the Toronto Island. They are going to build a tunnel underneath the water to join the Island Airport with the mainland and the people who are building it are outright giddy with the prospect of having this connection to their airport and the amount of money it is going to generate for them.
As far as the folks in my community are concerned, most of them are fuming over the whole idea because it is going to make things even more crowded for those who live here and their kids who go to school and play in the residential area that is becoming more dangerous for them every day.
The airport has been down here for over 60 years. It had been described as a “sleepy little community airport.” It was used by hobbyists and a few private airplane owners who chartered flights now and again. For decades it was a quaint part of the community along with the sailboats, charter fishing boats and ferry boats that took riders to the island to enjoy a day in the park away from the city, separated by the Toronto Harbour. Everybody in the area got along very well.
Then in 1999, the Government of Canada set up the Toronto Port Authority (TPA) to take charge of the activities of the Toronto Harbour. That initiative could have been good for everyone; however, this move ended up being catastrophic because the government went the extra step of wanting money out of it all. It deemed that this organization was to be self-sufficient – it had to make its own money and in fact they wanted it to turn a profit. This was awkward because the TPA had no real products or services to sell.
But they did have the idea that they could make money by encouraging businesses to come down and use the port lands that they controlled for a fee. There were some failures like a ferry that crossed Lake Ontario to the United States, but there were also some successes like turning the “sleepy island airport” into a major international airport. The airport idea took off, no pun intended, at the expense of the community, which endured all manner of trouble with extra traffic and abuse by airport related noise, pollution and congestion.
As the airport grew in huge proportion, plans were underway to build a bridge connecting the mainland with the airport. In 2003 the issue of the bridge to the island was a major element of the election for Toronto mayor. In some ways it was representative of a referendum on the bridge itself. The winner, David Miller, cancelled bridge construction and subsequently the Government of Canada paid an out-of-court settlement of $35 million to the companies involved with the airport of $35 million.
Some are arguing today that the tunnel violates the agreement because it is a fixed link.
I declare my bias on this matter because I live down here but I have come to know my neighbours and I can tell you that they are not shrill or falsely indignant. They have been lied to and tricked many times by the authorities. Even the major expansion of the airport was announced in a news release late on Christmas Eve to avoid media scrutiny.
The people who live in the immediate vicinity are for the most part poor people. They are new immigrants in metro housing who are often afraid to question authority. Most properties are co-operative housing units and many are subsidized by the government for those who are disabled or the working poor. There are hundreds of children down here and two schools right beside the airport. These are not the sort of people who are quick to call lawyers; they don’t have the money to do anything like that. Many of them don’t have the time, let alone the bus fare to get to meetings and city hall to discuss their own fate.
Watching the TPA step on these people and their children while claiming that they are working closely with the community is tragic.
Heino Molls is publisher of REM. Email [email protected].
