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Airport Privatization: A cash advance from Canadian travellers

Airport Privatization: A cash advance from Canadian travellers

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At the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto on Sept. 15, Prime Minister Mark Carney put the operations of Canada’s four largest airports on the table.

Under Ottawa’s proposal, private concessionaires would operate Toronto Pearson, Montréal-Trudeau, Vancouver and Calgary for several decades while the federal government retained ownership of the land and assets.

Mr. Carney said the concessions would raise “tens of billions of dollars” to finance regional airports, more affordable remote connections and a better passenger experience.

What Mr. Carney did not discuss is that Ottawa could incorporate projected concession proceeds into its fiscal framework and present that advance on future airport revenues as new investment capacity.

For a government at risk of lacking the means to finance its ambitions, that is the political key to the entire operation. No new wealth is created. Tomorrow’s airport revenues are simply brought forward to help pay for today’s agenda.

Canada has been through this before. In 2017, Justin Trudeau’s government considered privatizing essentially the same airports. The proposal was eventually shelved after widespread opposition from airlines, airport authorities, provincial governments and municipalities.

The municipal response was particularly significant.

In April 2017, Montreal city council unanimously opposed privatization. Its resolution warned of higher costs for passengers, lower long-term investment in infrastructure and services, and the gradual abandonment of less-profitable routes.

Vancouver, Victoria, Richmond and Calgary also raised objections. The Capital Regional District of Victoria brought the issue to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which called on Ottawa to consult municipalities before changing airport ownership.

Toronto city council followed in February 2018. By a vote of 36–0, it formally demanded municipal and public consultation before Ottawa made any ownership changes. A city staff report identified the same concerns heard elsewhere: higher charges for airlines and passengers, the loss of municipal influence over airport governance and the treatment of airports as revenue-generating assets rather than public infrastructure.

Those warnings appear more relevant today than they did nine years ago – particularly with respect to regional routes.

Between 2019 and 2024, domestic seat capacity at Canada’s regional airports fell by 17.1 per cent, according to the Canadian Airports Council. Direct routes declined by 3.9 per cent, while domestic connectivity dropped by between 10.1 and 12.7 per cent.

The Prime Minister now argues that concession proceeds would help reverse this decline. But he has not explained the central paradox: how would adding investors who must recover the price of their concession and earn an acceptable return lower the cost of aviation — particularly on routes that are already marginal?

Asked whether the proposal could increase airfares, Mr. Carney pointed to airport restaurants and shops, saying their returns have “nothing to do with the price of tickets.”

That’s textbook deflection by the Prime Minister.

Airport improvement fees are charged directly to passengers through their tickets. Landing, terminal and other aeronautical charges enter the cost base of airlines, which must recover them somewhere. Parking fees and other ground-access charges are paid directly by travellers.

Those costs do not remain confined to the airport imposing them. Airlines allocate aircraft, frequencies and expenses across networks containing routes with very different levels of profitability. Higher costs at major hubs can therefore mean higher fares, fewer flights or the withdrawal of service from marginal communities.

The international experience that concerned municipalities in 2017 has not become more reassuring. Australia was the clearest warning then, and it remains one today. Recent reports from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission continue to document rising airport charges and the effects of monopoly pricing on airlines and passengers.

Over a decade, real aeronautical revenue per passenger at Australia’s four monitored airports increased by between 13 and 38 per cent. In 2024–25, their parking operations generated more than $400 million in combined profits, while margins at individual airports reached roughly 77 per cent.

A well-designed concession can attract capital and improve services. Private capital is not inherently the problem. The problem is pretending that its return will come from the ether.

Mr. Carney is promising billions for the federal treasury, acceptable returns for concessionaires, lower travel costs and improved regional services — all from the same airport revenue stream.

Changing the terminology from “privatization” to “concession” changes neither the equation nor who will ultimately pay the bill.

Looking For Votes In All The Wrong Places

Looking For Votes In All The Wrong Places

One in six Canadians who voted Liberal in last year’s federal election now say they would vote NDP. That’s according to an Angus Reid survey released last week.

At first blush, it might look like the start of a comeback for a party reduced to just seven seats and 6.3 per cent of the popular vote in the last election.

It isn’t. At least not yet.

The question now is whether NDP leader Avi Lewis understands what those numbers mean for his party and its political strategy.

In his first major interview after becoming leader last March, Lewis argued that the NDP now has “wide-open political space” to advance “a really populist left agenda.” The Angus Reid poll suggests he’s looking for votes in all the wrong places.

The wide-open political space isn’t on the democratic left. It’s immediately to his right.

That’s because Mark Carney didn’t make the Liberal tent bigger. He picked it up, stakes and all, and moved it to the right.

Carney’s Liberals now occupy much of the political ground that once belonged to moderate conservatives.

The more the Liberal party occupies traditional centre-right terrain, the more it crowds Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party into Maple MAGA territory.

And as long as progressive Liberal voters continue to see Poilievre as the only realistic alternative, most will hold their nose and park their support behind Carney.

But Carney’s strategy has also created a constituency of Liberal voters who no longer feel entirely at home in the party they supported for years.

That is Avi Lewis’s opportunity.

The Angus Reid survey points to climate policy as the immediate catalyst. That’s hardly surprising after another summer dominated by catastrophic wildfires and growing unease over the government’s retreat from signature climate commitments.

But climate is only the entry point. The larger question is whether progressive Liberals still recognize the direction of a party that has repositioned itself across a much broader range of issues.

Nor is the opportunity confined to defining issues such as climate change. Lewis also needs the political agility to respond to the smaller, more transactional decisions that rarely dominate election campaigns but signal a government’s true colours.

The recent debate over the Gordie Howe International Bridge shows what that opportunity looks like.

Conservatives attacked Carney for negotiating a bad deal with Washington. They focused on the economics.

The real issue for many progressive Canadians was about living up to the Elbows Up slogan.

The message to them was that when Donald Trump applies enough pressure, the Liberal government folds.

That is an argument the Conservatives are poorly positioned to make because of their own complicated relationship with Trump.

The NDP isn’t.

Lewis could argue that the real issue is not the value of the deal but the effect of repeatedly accommodating an American administration that has made bullying Canada part of its political playbook.

That is a message capable of reaching well beyond the NDP’s traditional base and appeal to progressive Liberals.

For decades, the NDP tried to influence Liberal governments by pulling them leftward and measuring success by the number of New Democratic ideas they adopted.

It was a permanent opposition strategy.

If Lewis truly wants to rebuild the NDP, he has to think less like the leader of a permanent opposition party and more like someone assembling the first pieces of a governing coalition.

That coalition won’t be built exclusively from traditional New Democrats.  The Angus Reid numbers suggest that process may have started already.

If one in six Liberal voters switched, the NDP’s support would climb from 6.3 per cent to roughly 13.6 per cent.

When 338Canada projected the NDP at almost exactly that level during the 2019 election campaign, it projected the party would win roughly a dozen seats — that’s official party status.

And it’s before the NDP has made any deliberate effort to attract progressive Liberals.

But political opportunities rarely last.

The Liberal Party’s greatest strength has never been ideological consistency. It has been its ability to redefine the political centre before its opponents do.

Lewis now has an opportunity to respond in kind. Not by abandoning New Democratic values but by giving voice to compatible centrist preoccupations.

To paraphrase Mark Carney, Avi Lewis and the NDP need to see the country as it is, not as they wish it was.