Toronto airport expansion plan won't be released during consultations: port authority

Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport is pictured on Friday, July 26, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Michelle Siu

Consultations on the future of the Toronto island airport will go ahead without detailed plans on a possible expansion.

At a tense annual general meeting, officials with Toronto Port Authority said no expansion plan for Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport had been finalized or would be released before newly launched consultations end on July 24.

“We are not putting out a plan in advance of that. We couldn’t even if we wanted to. We’re still working on a plan,” vice-president Deborah Wilson said during Thursday’s meeting.

“What we have right now is a vision for the airport that is inclusive of allowing for modern aircraft and other things that will allow the airport to have a successful future.”

The port authority and Premier Doug Ford’s government want to expand the island airport to accommodate jets on a longer runway. Ontario passed legislation last month to take Toronto’s place in the airport’s tripartite governing agreement with the federal government and the port authority, an arm’s-length federal agency.

The law also gives Ontario the power to take over city-owned lands along the adjacent waterfront and Toronto Islands to facilitate an expansion.

Mayor Olivia Chow has called it a land grab without consultation to benefit “Wall Street investors”. The passenger terminal is owned by Nieuport Aviation, which is controlled by J.P. Morgan Asset Management, a U.S.-based firm.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, who previously said Ford has an “interesting” vision for the airport with “big possibilities,” said this month he had yet to form an opinion on the plan and promised consultations, which opened this week.

Without a clear plan, those consultations can’t be used by the port authority to prop up a future expansion proposal, said Phil Pothen, a lawyer for non-profit opposed to the expansion.

“They admitted that they haven’t even produced any proposals,” said Pothen, counsel for Environmental Defence.

“In some ways, this is reassuring news. But Torontonians should be approaching this survey and the entire process between now and the end of July as their opportunity to tell the federally controlled Port Authority and the federal government that controls it not to propose a jet runway at all.”

Details about the push for an expanded island airport have been shared piecemeal with no plan made public. Preliminary work had been shared with Ottawa and the province but not with the city, the port authority’s president said during a committee hearing last month.

The extension could add up to 600 metres to the current 1,200-metre runway, mostly jutting into the waters west of the airport, the port authority’s president told The Globe and Mail. A contentious Porter Airlines proposal to add 200 metres to each end of the runway was kiboshed by the federal government in 2015.

The port authority has said an expansion may cost up to $5 billion over 25 years. Ford says he wants to see the airport’s annual passenger activity more than quintuple to 10 million.

Wilson, the port authority’s vice-president, said the consultation results would inform its plans.

“This is a long process. And yes, a plan needs to come forward and then everyone will have the opportunity to look at that plan and opine upon that plan,” she said.

A letter this week signed by several high-profile Torontonians and former mayors called on Ottawa to hold off on any changes until “detailed evidence-based long-term plan” is made public to address the “many essential unanswered questions”. Signatories, including Hayley Wickenheiser and Margaret Atwood, said parliamentarians cannot surrender their responsibility over the airport to a provincial government “seeking to assert sole control.”

“We call upon your government to support full disclosure, to hold open, fully informed and unbiased public hearings on any such plan, including the trade-offs, size of expected infrastructure, land requirements, cost benefits, timelines, and the public uses to be sacrificed,” read the letter addressed to Carney.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2026.

Jordan Omstead, The Canadian Press