The potential has always been there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During my time at the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, I always noticed the airport\u2019s true value hiding in plain sight: its location.<\/p>\n
Pearson sits on 1,867 hectares of federal land inside Canada\u2019s seventh-largest city, at the centre of Canada\u2019s second-largest employment zone. According to a 2025 Deloitte study for the GTAA, the zone offers more than 500,000 jobs, many of them in Mississauga.\u00a0It boasts robust transit connectivity, offering access to the 401, 427, 409 and 407, the Kitchener GO line and the UP Express.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790808134_174_2DeNPYdrXQbde46QivZd2A.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790808136_529_Afo3papz87ELh8xheU2122.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
For an institutional investor, this is the underlying fact that could turn the airport from a natural monopoly business into a potential growth-based investment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ottawa is betting on the latter.<\/p>\n
Pearson is currently managed by a federal not-for-profit, the GTAA, which already runs a bespoke private model. It leases the land, then builds, maintains and operates its buildings and runways, generating revenue for growth and upkeep. This is not dissimilar to what the federal government is proposing right now.<\/p>\n
Last 30 Days: 55,123 Votes<\/p>\n
All Time: 1,550,261 Votes<\/p>\n
2397 VOTES
\n What have you cut back on the most because of the cost of living? <\/p>\n
Whether you like or dislike this model, you must be asking what changes with Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n
The answer is twofold, and one is structural. A concession framework will allow the future operator to develop and finance the airport in more ways than the current system allows.<\/p>\n
To understand this better, let\u2019s look at it in simpler terms. If the airport is a homeowner, it can only take a mortgage and spend it on its house. A private operator is more like a homeowner with a savings account: it can put its own money in, borrow against the house when beneficial to do so, refinance when rates change, or bring in a partner to build the garage suite and share the rent, all without selling the house.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Same property, more ways to pay for what gets built on it.<\/p>\n
The other reason is in Carney\u2019s exact words.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Sept. 15, Carney told potential investors at a summit in Toronto that \u201cCanadian pension funds already invest successfully in many airports around the world. It is time to bring that same expertise home to more directly benefit all Canadians.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The prime minister is referring to the ability to unlock the airport\u2019s true value through its location. Today, Canadian pension funds hold stakes in the Copenhagen, Bristol and Birmingham airports via the Ontario Teachers\u2019 Pension Plan. They also hold stakes in Athens, D\u00fcsseldorf, Hamburg, and Budapest through the Public Sector Pension Investment Board\u2019s AviAlliance, as well as Heathrow through Quebec\u2019s public pension manager, the Caisse de d\u00e9p\u00f4t.<\/p>\n
These airports earn a growing share of their money from things that have nothing to do with airplanes: parking, logistics, offices, hotels, retail, energy, and above all, land. This is harder to do today at Pearson, with Transport Canada requiring consent for all non-aviation development on airport land, on a case-by-case basis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An investor paying billions for Pearson will look at the land around the runways and see what I saw at my time at the airport: a city waiting to be built.<\/p>\n
So, what is an Airport City?<\/p>\n
Schiphol coined the term in the 1990s; Frankfurt, Dallas\u2013Fort Worth, Incheon, Dubai and the Australian airports built the model. An Airport City is an airport that behaves like a downtown: office parks and hotels beside the terminals, logistics and cargo campuses along the perimeter, retail villages, conference facilities, sometimes a business school or a hospital, and increasingly its own power plant and solar fields, all on airport land, all under the airport\u2019s control, all generating rent instead of landing fees.<\/p>\n
Edmonton is already building one, an \u201cAirport City\u201d with a solar farm, an outlet mall and an industrial park on its lease. Pearson\u2019s own real-estate arm already leases 1.3 million square feet of office and industrial space along Airport Road. A private operator could do that at many times the scale and in Mississauga, where land is scarce and expensive; doing so would not come as a surprise.<\/p>\n
What would this mean for Mississauga?<\/p>\n
Expanding many times its current scale requires a lot of construction around the airport. This is inevitable, but it also raises the question: what would investors most likely build, and under what mandate?<\/p>\n
One outcome of Ottawa\u2019s 1994 National Airports Policy was a set of public accountability principles built into how all our major airports operate today: board nominees from governments and municipalities, including Mississauga via Peel; annual public meetings and reports; an independent performance review every five years; competitive tendering above a set dollar threshold; 60 days\u2019 public notice before raising fees.<\/p>\n
Would these public accountability principles be baked into the future concession framework for private operators? No one knows yet, and it is worth watching as more details are shared in the coming weeks and months. But for now, we can try to understand what an Airport City in Mississauga would mean for its residents and what Mississauga should be asking for.<\/p>\n
What the investors will likely build<\/p>\n
When we look at what these same investors have built at their other airports, we see the quick wins: a cargo and logistics campus on the perimeter land (Pearson is already Canada\u2019s largest cargo airport, with three 400-series highways beside it), and more revenue from parking, rideshare fees and rental cars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After that, you get the buildings: hotels and offices around the new transit centre (much like the way Frankfurt built offices and hotels right over its rail station), and a retail and outlet village like Brisbane\u2019s and Edmonton\u2019s.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then the long-dated plays: energy self-supply for the terminals, solar on leased land, and contracting the airport\u2019s existing 117 MW plant in a region short of power; aerospace and maintenance hangars in Malton\u2019s old aviation heartland; and, eventually, a convention hotel at the hub.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Every one of those makes money without a single extra flight. That\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n
What Mississauga should ask for<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s list should start with the one thing Australian councils never got: a seat at the table where those developments get approved, written into the contract.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then the things the city already says it wants. A direct rapid-transit link between the airport and Square One will be the piece that turns the new hotel and convention centre beside the Living Arts Centre, the downtown LRT loop, and the Airport City into one economy instead of two rivals; with an airport conference hotel sized to feed downtown, not replace it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A power and resilience anchor for the northeast in the form of a district energy system for the Airport Corporate Centre, backup capacity for Malton, grid room for the corridor\u2019s 500,000 jobs using the one lever the city holds: its say over any new generation at the airport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A skills campus and local-hiring targets so the jobs come with a ladder.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A goods-movement plan that keeps the cargo trucks on the 401, 427 and 407 and off Derry and Airport roads.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Parkland, tree cover and real noise enforcement at the airport\u2019s edge, with money for Malton.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And a community payment that grows with every square foot built because that\u2019s what pays for the rest.<\/p>\n
The only card we hold<\/p>\n
So, will Mississauga soon have its own Airport City? Almost certainly. Every investor Ottawa is inviting has built one somewhere else, and Pearson is the best-located airport any of them will ever bid on. People in Ottawa and in pension offices downtown will negotiate the fees, the flights, and the financing. The location can\u2019t be negotiated. It\u2019s here, it\u2019s ours, and it\u2019s the one thing in this deal the city actually holds. The question isn\u2019t whether an Airport City gets built next door; it\u2019s whether Mississauga is at the table when it is.<\/p>\n
Carl Rodgers ran the energy and greenhouse gas program at Toronto Pearson from 2013 to 2020 and is founder and principal of Gridfirst Advisory Inc., based in Mississauga.<\/p>\n