This coming Monday July 12, 2010, the Toronto Port Authority holds its Annual General Meeting – in the Queen’s Quay Room of the Westin Harbour Castle, at 9:30 a.m.

This is the one opportunity in the year for those who are affected by the expanding airport operations, or are concerned about how that expansion is affecting the waterfront, to hold the TPA accountable.

Highlights of the past year include:

• The revelation, in Porter’s aborted public offering that, as we suspected, Porter’s doing terribly – selling fewer than one in every two seats, and running out of cash, and the market it thought existed for a successful airline based at the Island Airport, has been proven to be insufficient to achieve profitability. That points directly to Porter’s likely bankruptcy, and a serious discussion on alternative uses of the airport’s 215 acres.
• Victory after victory in the courts for the City, in its long battle to get the TPA to pay its fair share of property taxes. The battle’s not over, but there’s little room now for the TPA to squirm out of its obligations – enough money is likely owing that the TPA will also be bankrupt.
• Targets for reduction of greenhouse gases, widely discussed at Copenhagen last December, by anyone’s calculation, have to mean the end of short-haul flights, as some of the lowest hanging fruit. This airport is not sustainable, in any sense.
• The inability of the TPA to control the hordes of taxis that threaten the safety and health of everyone in the vicinity of Eireann Quay.
• The total absence of transparency and accountability of the TPAs directors – at least last year, minutes of directors’ meetings were being leaked.
• The continuing failure of the TPA to attend to its basic responsibilities – the collapsing seawalls in both the Western and Eastern Gaps.
• A five-year review of the TPA’s operations, released in December, that ignored all of the major decisions that gave Porter its monopoly, even though its stated goal was to verify compliance with the TPA policy that requires tenders on any contract over $100,000
• A dramatic expansion of the number of slots (Landing and takeoff rights) to be handed out – far beyond he contemplation of any of the previous studies of the limits imposed by the tripartite agreement
• Continued flagrant violation of the tripartite agreement’s prohibition on    commercial flights, save for STOL aircraft, and of excessively noisy aircraft
• Abusive and cursory treatment by the TPA of the community reps on its noise management committee, culminating with no effective consultation ,and false efforets to allege the committee had been consulted
• Refusal to move engine maintenance run-ups to another airport – and opting to build – without any input from the communities affected, noise barriers costing a million dollars.
• Holding two community meetings as open houses, over the strenuous objections of the community, leading to their having to be taken over by the community
• Pushing forward with a ludicrous tunnel that can’t possibly be economically justified,and is prohibited by the law that stopped the bridge