A lot of us in CommunityAIR think Air Canada’s announced Island Airport operation as “short-term pain, long-term gain”.

Short-term pain because there’ll be more flight, more traffic, more noise, and more pollution, further damaging the liveability of our waterfront communities, and the attraction of the waterfront for the 12 million who visit it each year. That’s bad for our warterfront, and bad for our City.

Long- term gain? The real story here is that Air Canada is most likely coming into the Island Airport to put Porter out of business.

Given Porter’s shaky finances, the fact that Porter’s not found the market it expected, and the vast resources at AC’s disposal, Porter’s demise can’t be that far off.

Then Air Canada will abandon the Island Airport, as it has before.

And then we can get on with imagining something truly spectacular on the 215 acres now occupied by the Island Airport.

 What do you think?

  Brian Iler, chair
  CommunityAIR