Sept 15 (Reuters) – Canada’s transport minister said on Tuesday he expects strong interest from Canadian pension funds and possible participation from Australians, as the country opens its four \u200clargest airports to private investment. <\/p>\n
“We anticipate a very, very strong Canadian presence in these concession \u200cagreements,” Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon told Reuters in an interview. <\/p>\n
“The Canadian investors, notably pension plans, have made it known over the \u200byears that they’ve become very good at this sort of investment in other jurisdictions.” <\/p>\n
Earlier, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government was seeking private investment through long-term concessions to operate airports in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary as part of a campaign to boost the economy. <\/p>\n
The move would not open the \u200cdoor to a sale or change \u2060in public ownership. Carney said investors would not have to be “strictly” from Canada and there would be a competition. <\/p>\n
MacKinnon added that foreign investment approvals and national \u2060security tests would be part of any deal. <\/p>\n
Infrastructure companies, seeing strong, long-term demand for air travel, are investing billions of dollars in revamping airport terminals in countries like the United States and Australia. <\/p>\n
Australia’s Macquarie Asset Management, which \u200bhas \u200binvested in a new airport terminal south of Montreal, \u200bsees “significant potential for further investment” in Canada’s \u200ctransportation infrastructure sector, said Karl Kuchel, the company’s head of infrastructure in the Americas. Opportunities in that transport space “have been relatively limited in recent years compared to other infrastructure sectors,” he added. <\/p>\n
Spokespeople from Canadian pension fund La Caisse and Australia’s IFM Investors both said they see opportunity from the announcement. <\/p>\n
MacKinnon said it was fair to say that “Australian investors who invest around the world and who welcome Canadian \u200cinvestment in their country in infrastructure and in other things \u200bwould be eligible investors.” <\/p>\n
Carney’s plan has drawn criticism from labour \u200bgroups who warn that private investment in \u200bairports has led to higher costs for passengers. <\/p>\n
“Private investors don’t put billions into \u200cairports unless they expect to make billions \u200bback,” said Lily Chang, secretary-treasurer \u200bof the Canadian Labour Congress. <\/p>\n
MacKinnon said Canada would learn from the experience of other countries. <\/p>\n
“We are far from the first movers on this,” he said. “So we’ll want to follow the \u200bbest practices that we’ve observed in \u200cconducting an open, fair process and one that certainly opens the door wide to \u200bCanadian investment in these facilities.” <\/p>\n
(Reporting By Allison Lampert in Montreal, David Ljunggren in Ottawa and \u200bNivedita Balu in Toronto; Editing by David Gregorio) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sept 15 (Reuters) – Canada’s transport minister said on Tuesday he expects strong interest from Canadian pension funds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[265746,72,289,113,61,975,60,8189,10660,265745],"class_list":["post-625797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-airports-in-toronto","tag-business","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-investment","tag-ireland","tag-mark-carney","tag-pension-funds","tag-steven-mackinnon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}