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Ontario Premier Doug Ford is fully on board with the prime minister’s plan to see private investors take over operations at Canada’s four largest airports, including Toronto Pearson, he said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Ford said not only is the idea “fabulous,” but it should be expanded to include Toronto’s island airport.<\/p>\n
“I have to give credit where credit’s due,” he said at an unrelated press conference.<\/p>\n
The premier has been pushing for the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport to be expanded<\/a> so it can accommodate jets, continuing his push even after the federal government rejected the plan.<\/a><\/p>\n Prime Minister Mark Carney, however, has left the door slightly ajar, saying last month that while the results of a consultation that garnered mostly negative responses were clear, he was not nixing the expansion forever.<\/p>\n The island airport is an ideal project for privatization, as it is “shovel ready” and would greatly benefit the economy, Ford said Wednesday.<\/p>\n “Times have changed now,” he said.<\/p>\n “It’s not about the government funding everything. We have billions and billions, hundreds of billions, actually over a trillion of pension fund money … We’re encouraging all of Ontario and Canadian pension funds to invest, invest into our airports, invest into our nuclear, and invest into the (electricity) distribution.”<\/p>\n WATCH | Carney pitched plan to privatize Pearson and 3 other Canadian airports: Airport private investment makes sense now ‘in different times,’ Carney says<\/p>\n Asked why the Liberal government is choosing to allow private investment in four of Canada’s largest airports now when prior governments rejected the plan, Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government is building the country in a more dangerous, divided and ‘hostile’ environment.<\/p>\n Carney announced Tuesday that under his airport pitch, the federal government would retain ownership of the land and assets.<\/p>\n He said the government is not looking to privatize airports but rather to change their operational structure, and it would reinvest money that’s raised into regional airports<\/p>\n Opposition party leaders call out Ford’s support<\/p>\n Provincial opposition party leaders are not quite so fond of Carney’s plan or Ford’s support to privatize airports. <\/p>\n Ford focused on his own pitch for Billy Bishop Airport and didn’t have a word about the potential impacts on travellers or airport workers, said Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles on social media platform X. <\/p>\n “Just another run at one of the last public spaces every family in this city can afford. Toronto said no. He’s trying again anyway,” she said. <\/p>\n The province needs investments that help everyday people, rather than “line the pockets of the rich,” said Ontario Greens Leader Mike Schreiner in a news release. <\/p>\n “Premier Ford should be looking for opportunities that will create good, generational jobs in Ontario \u2014 not looking for new ways to sell off our public infrastructure,” Schreiner said. <\/p>\n He called on the government “to get its priorities straight,” adding that privatized airports will make air travel even more expensive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":["post-898238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898238","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=898238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789585331_389_default.jpg\")
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