Love or hate Toronto City Centre Airport, the port itself will prove Toronto's lifeline if the world ever gets serious about global warming, or if peak oil limits our access to fuel. We simply cannot continue using trucks to deliver the materials this city consumes if oil gets too expensive or if laws and treaties mandate significant carbon reductions. If we find ourselves unable to use trucks and have no alternatives, then the city will empty. Hate the airport as much as you want, but unless we see an extraordinary technical innovation, everyone who lives in this city in the centuries to come will have reason to thank Lisa Raitt and the Toronto Port Authority for preventing developers from destroying the container terminal or vandalizing the turning basin with a promenade, chi-chi coffee shops, and other meaningless fripperies for the "creative class".

John Spragge