Mr. Freeman:
I generally calculate that the waterfront available to Toronto residents stretches 100km from Oshawa to Burlington, and the Toronto City Centre Airport occupies about 2km of actual waterfront. Put another way, Toronto has over 1,133 hectares of water-fronting property dedicated to recreational and cultural uses, or about 90% of the publicly owned waterfront. The remainder includes the port, for low-emissions transportation of bulk goods, and the medical, educational, and commercial aviation at Toronto City Centre Airport. The airport property includes only about 7% of all the lake-front land in Toronto dedicated to public uses.

These percentages, however, have little to do with the question of equity. No city can ever have perfect environmental fairness, but that doesn't mean we have to make the problem worse. Inevitably, in every city, some places will have an airport, which means other places will not have an airport. Accepting this does not give us a license to further burden one particular part of the city.

Mr. Rose:
Have you read the discussion so far? Closing Toronto City Centre Airport would not move air traffic away from residential neighbourhoods or parks; it would just move air traffic away from the condos on the waterfront and to the homes and parks in Malton, Rexdale, and North Toronto generally. Can you explain why 2% of Toronto's commercial passenger traffic will ruin Queen's Quay, but the Malton Greenway, Humber Woods Park, and the Clairville Conservation Area can do just fine with the air traffic (and its side effects) concentrated at Pearson?

John Spragge