“The waterfront is better used for people than for planes”: This lawyer and activist has been fighting the Billy Bishop expansion for over a decade

Doug Ford has reignited one of Toronto’s most enduring waterfront battles. Earlier this week, the Ontario premier announced plans to expropriate Billy Bishop airport from the city in order to extend its runway and bring jets to the Toronto Islands. Ford says the province is prepared to compensate Toronto roughly $5 million a year to take control of the site—despite pushback from Mayor Olivia Chow, who has opposed an airport expansion since her first bid for mayor in 2014. At the time, Porter Airlines was leading the push for jets at Billy Bishop, but the plan was ultimately shelved after a bruising political battle.

Now, the jet debate is back on the runway. Brian Iler is a lawyer who has provided counsel for a host of charities, co-ops and green energy projects. He’s also a co-founder of NoJetsTO, a grassroots group formed to oppose the original jet expansion. We asked him to explain whether Ford actually has the legal authority to seize the airport and what his plan could mean for Toronto’s waterfront.

From a legal standpoint, how realistic is Ford’s plan to expropriate Billy Bishop from the city? Does the province actually have the power to do it? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Under Ontario’s Expropriations Act, the provincial government has the power to take land for what it considers a public purpose, including land owned by a municipality. We’ve already seen the province use that authority to take control of city lands, most notably at Ontario Place. It’s an enormous amount of power in the hands of the province, and right now, that effectively means in the hands of Doug Ford.

Billy Bishop is governed by a three-party agreement between the city, the federal government and the Toronto Port Authority. Does that complicate Ford’s plan? If the province were to expropriate the airport lands, it would essentially step into the city’s shoes under that agreement and assume the city’s role in it. But both the agreement and the Port Authority itself are primarily federal initiatives, and historically the province has had only a relatively marginal role. So if the federal government doesn’t go along with the plan, taking control of Billy Bishop may not be as straightforward as Ford suggests.

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Ford says expanding the airport and bringing in jets would generate significant economic benefits. Does he have a point? The province has pointed to studies making that argument, but those studies don’t ask the obvious question: if Billy Bishop didn’t exist, would that travel simply shift to Pearson? Of course it would. People who need to fly would just use Pearson instead. With the Union Pearson Express, getting there is often just as easy as getting to Billy Bishop, especially given downtown traffic. We’ve already seen Porter move most of its flights to Pearson, reducing its operations at Billy Bishop by about 70 per cent compared with where they were in 2015. So there’s no clear net economic gain from the island airport that wouldn’t exist anyway with Pearson. It’s also hard to square with Ford’s plans for a new convention centre and spa nearby. Do we really want to expose that area to even more aircraft noise and pollution?

The bigger question right now is whether Ford’s plan is even feasible. The last time jets were seriously considered, in the mid-2010s, it became clear that they wouldn’t fit without major changes. The runways would have to be extended significantly, and studies from that period show how difficult that would be given the limited land available on the island. One consulting report estimated that it could cost around $1 billion to accommodate jets, and even then the runways would still be short. This is far from a slam dunk. It’s almost as ridiculous as Ford’s prohibitively expensive idea of tunnelling under the 401.

You’ve been fighting the expansion of Billy Bishop for decades. What are the main drawbacks? The airport is simply in the wrong place. You don’t build airports in the middle of residential neighbourhoods. And in a nutshell, the main problems are that this airport brings significant noise and pollution into the waterfront. Ford has made claims about bringing in “whisper jets,” but that’s public-relations nonsense. Even without jets, the noise limits set out in the tripartite agreement are not always respected. The Q400 turboprops currently flying out of Billy Bishop already push those limits, and allowing jets would only make the situation worse.

Jets also require a flatter glide path than Q400s, meaning buildings near the flight paths, from the harbour to Humber Bay, couldn’t be built as tall as they otherwise might. That would constrain development in an already dense part of the city.

There are also serious concerns about air quality. A recent University of Toronto study found elevated levels of ultrafine particles along the waterfront. These are microscopic particles produced by aircraft exhaust that are small enough to penetrate deep into the human body and are potentially carcinogenic. When the wind blows from the south, the airport is clearly the source. The World Health Organization has recommended exposure limits for these particles, and the levels measured near the airport exceed them.

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You’ve argued that Billy Bishop shouldn’t be on the Toronto Islands in the first place. What would you like to see happen to the airport instead? Instead of looking at the site purely in financial terms, we should be asking how the land could best serve the public. In my view, the right answer is parkland. Converting the airport’s roughly 210 acres from an industrial use into green space would create a tremendous asset for the city. It would expand parkland on the island by about two-thirds, creating space for trees, bike paths and recreational areas for all Torontonians to enjoy.

We can emulate other cities that have closed waterfront airports and transformed them into parks. Chicago’s Meigs Field is a famous case. In 2003, then-mayor Richard Daley shut the airport down overnight by sending in bulldozers to dig up the runway. Today the site is a beautiful 120-acre park along the lakefront. We may not have a mayor prepared to do it that dramatically, but it shows what’s possible when a city decides that its waterfront is better used for people than for planes.

If the province does push ahead with expropriation and jet expansion, what avenues would opponents still have to challenge it? This won’t play out in the courts. It will play out politically, through lobbying efforts and public criticism. Given Ford’s history of intervening in municipal affairs, there’s already a lot of frustration among Toronto’s city councillors that could translate into a united front to challenge this. And a key part of that will be working with the Toronto Liberal caucus of MPs and making sure they hear clearly from the city. The mayor’s office can play a role there by reaching out and helping to apply pressure.

We’ve seen this before. When Porter first proposed bringing jets to the Toronto Islands in 2013, I co-founded NoJetsTO to oppose it. Through sustained advocacy and with support from the federal government, we were able to stop it. The issue may be back, but we can fight it again.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.