Does Canada need private airports?

Frequency podcast network. Stories that matter. Podcasts that resonate. Against the backdrop of a high-profile investment summit in Toronto, where the Prime Minister made his pitch to attract big money to Canada, he even offered a piece of the pie at the country's four biggest airports. Airports in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver went on the block as Carney unveiled his government's intent to sell concessions.

It's a common approach to running airports in Europe, Asia and Australia. But while the asset ultimately remains in public hands, excess revenue would go to investors, raising concern that private operators, motivated by profit, could make traveling more expensive. I'm Karen Seolin and today on The Big Story I'm speaking first with Simon Enoch,

senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives to discuss what it could mean for your travel costs. Then I'm joined by Mark McQueen, a former advisor in Brian Mulroney's PMO about why the move is significant and how he'd advise Prime Minister Carney on airport privatization. Simon, welcome to The Big Story. Thanks so much for making the time.

Thanks for having me. If you could, could you just quickly explain for our listeners how the current nonprofit model at airports works right now? Sure thing. So currently, the federal government owns most of our major airports, and then

they're operated by a private not-for-profit airport authority. And that not-for-profit airport authority, any profits that it does make are automatically reinvested back into airport operations or capital improvements or things like that. No profits go to shareholders or anything like that. The airport authority also pays the federal government ground rent

every year and it can be substantial. It was $525 million in 2025. Pearson Airport alone pays the federal government $236 million. And also on top of that, most major airports also pay what's called payment in lieu of taxes to the municipalities within which they operate. So once again for in Pearson, it was about $41 million to the city of Mississauga and to Peel Region.

So these entities are not only self-sustaining, they actually contribute to the public purse every year. So the Prime Minister then has announced plans, not necessarily to privatize airports, but to sell concessions, as he says, meaning, you know, the stores, the restaurants and

other, you know, passenger facing elements that could all potentially be owned by private operators. airport itself, the government of Canada will keep control and continue to run it. Break down for us how all of what you've just laid out could change and how air travel in

this country could change under that kind of model. Sure thing. So under a long term lease, we need to know the details, but how this is operated in other countries that have done the sort of same thing, the same sort of asset recycling that

the prime minister is talking about is you would effectively sell a long term lease to private investors. This is usually at least 50 years, sometimes as long as 99 years, to private investors for an upfront payment, however much they want to negotiate.

In turn, the private investors would now run the airport for that 50-year term and would be free to recoup as much profit as they could during that lease. Obviously, they have an incentive to make more money than what they paid in the upfront payment.

At the end of that lease, the airport would return to the federal government's control. So essentially then what the prime minister is saying is through these upfront payments, he's going to raise billions of dollars. And then in his words, he says he's going to redeploy that in Canadian projects used,

I think, for example, regional airports. Do you agree with the intent of the idea then to raise upfront cash for Canada's own infrastructure spending? I mean, my question would be, you know, it seems like these asset recycling schemes

are ways to avoid raising taxes, avoid debt spending. And I wonder if it's the wisest use of our public infrastructure, because there are real consequences for the public

of giving these long-term concessions to private investors, as I'm sure we'll talk about. So there are other options to raise money. I just wonder if politically they're not as palatable

as a sort of long-term lease where the public candidates never really done this before. So we don't really know what the consequences are, but we can certainly look at other countries

and see what their experience has been like. And I certainly have questions about what we can learn from other countries' experience with this. I do wanna return to your point though

about government sources of capital because it can't all come from the government, right? Like they include, as you mentioned, taxation and borrowing.

We of course already borrow a lot. I don't know too many Canadians who would put up their hands to be taxed more. I mean, the government has said,

look, we don't have enough capital to develop all of our infrastructure projects. So what do you think makes more sense then for the government to do in terms of financing

our infrastructure projects? Is it borrowing more money? Money that needs to be paid back and paid in trust? I think what I would sort of contest the premise

insofar as private capital isn't investing in these public infrastructure out of altruism, right? They wanna make a profit. And at the end of the day,

I think we as citizens need to assess whether this is a good deal for Canadians, given the consequences of turning over our control of a major asset like an airport for 50, for 99 years. Because ultimately it would be us that make the majority of the payments

on the cost, right, as passengers. So I really think we need to make that assessment. We're going to pay regardless. And do we want to pay via taxation, via debt, or do we want to pay

out of our own pockets as passengers to these airports. Yeah, to your point, I mean, private investors are not going to be putting billions into an airport unless they expect to make billions back.