Canadian Press reports<\/a>\u00a0that the province this week passed into law a bill that allows it to take over all the land on the Toronto Islands where Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport is located.<\/p>\nThe province says it will not take over the entirety of the Toronto Islands and will work with the city to only use the land needed to make the airport bigger.<\/p>\n
Premier Doug Ford calls YTZ a \u201ccrown jewel,\u201d and wants to extend the runways to allow for jet planes. Currently, only turboprops can land at the facility.<\/p>\n
The new law also allows the province to take Toronto\u2019s spot in a tripartite agreement that governs the land, an accord that is currently between the city, the federal government and the Toronto Port Authority, which is a federal agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to work with the Toronto Port Authority to ensure that we move forward with that and deploy the special economic zones and other tools that are needed to ensure that this project is moved forward,\u201d said Ontario\u00a0Transportation Minister Prabmeet\u00a0Sarkaria.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s too important for Ontario, for Canada, not to get this project moving forward,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has called the project a land grab without consultation.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce again, Torontonians are the victims of provincial overreach, robbed of their say over the future of their own waterfront,\u201d Chow said in a statement on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The port authority supports the plan, which Ford hopes will increase passenger traffic from two million a year to 10 million.<\/p>\n
The federal government has been publicly noncommittal on the idea. Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon\u2019s office told Canadian Press it will work closely with the province and other partners on the airport and support its long-term success.<\/p>\n
\u201cConsultations will launch this summer providing communities and residents with an opportunity to share their perspectives. Feedback gathered through this process will play a role in guiding any future decisions and shaping the tripartite agreement,\u201d his office said in an email.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Mark Carney has called Ford\u2019s idea a \u201cvery interesting vision\u201d with \u201cbig possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ontario has passed legislation that will soon designate Toronto\u2019s island airport as a \u201cspecial economic zone\u201d in an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":701593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,3302],"class_list":["post-701592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701592","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=701592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=701592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=701592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=701592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}