I challenged Volpe directly during the 2003 municipal election when he tried to intimidate mayoral candidate Miller stating that there would possibly be expensive legal consequences if he persisted in his campaign to stop the bridge. Volpe refused to explain himself, but it wouldn’t surprise me he had a hand in the $35 million pay out to Porter as a highly questionable recompense for the bridge cancellation. And he and his ilk have been picking on the little Toronto island community for years, like it’s some evil leper colony. Yeah some “mafia” … a puny 600 people (over half are kids and seniors) squished into a small 30 acre area of leased land tucked into the eastern part of the park (4%).

Let’s get some perspective here! The quickly growing waterfront community is now populated by some 20,000 residents and counting. And millions visit the waterfront and Toronto islands park yearly. All are affected directly by the accelerated noise and pollution of the island airport, now a privately run commercial enterprise where one could easily suspect a kind of “mafia” operates!

This “mafia” has essentially exclusive control over all the western part of the park, a vast swath of land occupying a huge 25% of the whole park. It’s run by a veritable cabal of moneyed interests with connections to the highest echelons of government on both sides of the border. The chairman of Porter was the CEO of American Airlines, thus the smooth unfettered opening of US transit routes. Other Porter directors (some of which Community Air has already profiled) have connections right into PM Harper’s Cabinet and PM Martin’s Cabinet before, and its most senior ministers. Funny how a whole series of events work in Porter’s favour … a $35 million “gift” to jump start operations, millions in property tax breaks of which the average Toronto Joe citizen bears the brunt, the unflinching endorsement and support of Transport Canada, the embarrassing governmental excuse for a regulating agency – the constantly genuflecting self-serving TPA whose governance is callously stacked with government appointed sycophants who blindly support Porter at every move.