The Ford government says the runway will be expanded over the next few years to allow for jets. <\/p>\n
Premier Doug Ford says the provincial government will be seizing ownership of city-owned lands at Toronto\u2019s Billy Bishop Airport and declaring it a special economic zone, invoking new powers that will allow it to override environmental and other regulations. <\/p>\n
The Ford government says the runway will be expanded over the next few years to allow for jets. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur government will soon introduce legislation to take over the City of Toronto\u2019s role in the tripartite agreement that governs the airport\u2019s operations, and we will move to take ownership of the city-owned lands in the airport in exchange for fair compensation,\u201d Ford said at a news conference at the airport Monday morning. <\/p>\n
He said the move will allow the province to extend the runway to accommodate jet traffic at Billy Bishop Airport, upgrade the terminal building and improve access to Toronto\u2019s waterfront. <\/p>\n
Ford said the government will declare the airport a special economic zone in order to \u201cstreamline approvals while maintaining strong safety and environmental protections.\u201d<\/p>\n
The government introduced special economic zones last year as part of a suite of measures they said would help unlock the province\u2019s economic potential. The declaration allows the province to bypass ordinary regulations in order to fast-track projects deemed important to the economy. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur plan will help Billy Bishop airport realize its full potential, it will reduce pressure at Pearson International, increase competition, and bring cheaper flights and options, more routes and more convenience to the millions of people from across Ontario who use this airport every year,\u201d Ford said. <\/p>\n
The province said the Toronto Port Authority estimates the airport\u2019s activities will contribute up to $8.5 billion to Canada\u2019s economy every year by 2050 and support up to 23,000 jobs in Ontario\u2019s construction sector.<\/p>\n
Area residents downtown have long fought the expansion of the island airport to allow for jets, arguing that it will create excessive noise and pollution. <\/p>\n
Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, said there are \u201ca whole bunch of issues\u201d arising out of the government\u2019s plan. <\/p>\n
\u201cExpanding the runways are one. Obviously, there\u2019s environmental impacts from that,\u201d Gray said, speaking at a separate news conference at Queen\u2019s Park. \u201cWe\u2019ve spent almost three decades re-engineering the Portlands, and we\u2019re just at the point now we can start actually building community down there, and a lot of the higher buildings will be right in the flight path of future jets. <\/p>\n
He added that \u201cclearly, the people of Toronto should have say in this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ford government says the runway will be expanded over the next few years to allow for jets.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[712,49,48,44],"class_list":["post-555714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}