Wow!

 Mark McQueen, the past chair (and continuing member of the Board of Directors) of the Port Authority now impugns the legitimacy of elected politicians?! We note that Councillor Adam Vaughan received 51.7 percent of the votes cast in the hard-fought 2006 municipal election, while Stephen Harper’s Tories, who appointed Mark and five others on the TPA board received only 37.6 percent. Who has more legitimacy?

 His 50,000 monthly users of the Island Airport is worth looking at: With Porter’s eight planes, and, conservatively, seven round trips each out of Toronto, that’s a total of 112 movements (landings plus takeoffs) per day, or 3,360 over a 30-day month. Divide that into 50,000, and you get only 15 passengers per flight. That’s a passenger load that’s far less than break-even for Porter. I’d say ominously low. And not something to crow about, Mark.

 It seems to us that any starting point for any discussion of the merits of the airport has to be respect for the existing noise constraints that were agreed upon years ago for the protection of the surrounding communities - constraints, that the TPA has failed to honour to date, and which Mark McQueen studiously avoids responding to: well after CommunityAIR drew to his attention the specific noise limits for aircraft clearly set out in the tripartite agreement, and the ICAO data referenced in the tripartite agreement that establishes that the Q400 breaches those limits, he wrote:

"I have yet to see any independent evidence that Porter breaks the

specific noise db's outlined in the Tripartite agreement. It is easy to say

that they do, but the decibel level is quite clear in the agreement.

In the absence of any evidence regarding your complaint, we cannot

take action obviously." .

 Another starting point might also be for the TPA to honour  all the promises made to share information at the TPA’s invitation–only meeting on noise, held November 25, 2008. These promises have not yet been honoured, notwithstanding a number of follow-up reminders.

    Brian Iler