No matter how you slice the data, from the sound measurements (the NEF 25 contour for TCCA may not, by agreement, touch land, while the NEF 25 contour for Pearson takes in the dwellings of 100,000 people) to the pollution (58000 people live in the immediate vicinity of Pearson as of the 2001 census), I have to question your central argument: that Toronto City Centre Airport affects more people than Pearson.

As for high speed rail, your group claims to represent one of the most educationally and financially privileged neighbourhoods in Canada. If a feasible way of building high speed rail in Canada exists, you should have the resources available to push such a project. And when high speed trains start to operate between Toronto, Ottawa, and Windsor, then the market for air travel to those cities should dry up. But if you close Toronto City Centre Airport now, without high speed train service, then people won't stop flying, and they will go to Pearson. And the thought that maybe someday someone will build a fast train doesn't offer much comfort to the kids growing up in Malton now.

Just to apply some more numbers: the best data I have indicates that a car with an average passenger load produces, at best, marginally less greenhouse gas per passenger than a Q-400.

John Spragge