[URBAN NOTE] "Porter Airlines’ blindsided island neighbours have a right to be angry"

[rfmcdonald]

After thinking about the issue of Porter Airlines' proposed acquisition of Bombardier jets and talking about it with a friend last night, I've come to agree with the article expressed in Royson James' Toronto Star article. Opening up the Toronto Islands' airport to air traffic occurred in certain specific contexts that really should not be retroactively revised, for the sake of fairness and credibility.

Ten years after securing an iron-clad agreement that protects [the Toronto Island] neighbourhood from the more damaging effects of an expanded island airport, their “partners” want to tear up the deal.

In fact, they would do so unilaterally if they could. Porter Airlines and their enabling landlord, the Toronto Port Authority, revealed their intent Wednesday at a news conference that kicked dirt in the face of the residents. Their strategy is to change the deal — not through careful consultation and respectful negotiations, but by launching a public relations campaign aimed at pitting airport customers against the beleaguered resident population that is not without clout and resources.

It is the first really bad move Porter founder and boss Bob Deluce has made with this venture that few expected to thrive as it has.

[. . .]

When Deluce promised a quiet plane in the current Q 400, many were skeptical. To say the planes have lived up to Deluce’s words is not to suggest that they don’t pollute or they don’t make any noise. And to say the airport operations have been relatively uneventful (there have been very few news stories about problems and complaints) is not to suggest that residents are superbly happy.

The majority would still prefer parkland to an airport. But there’s been a truce, détente, if you will. Now this political grenade.

Deluce’s bid for jets and runway expansion reveal what the residents and opponents from downtown to Etobicoke and Scarborough suspected all along. The end game is to have Billy Bishop become a busy, bustling, commercial airport right in the middle of the city. Deluce and others will not stop, expanding bit by bit, until the number of airplanes in the sky matches the number of boats in the water.