Prime Minister Mark Carney says his government will open up Canada’s four largest airports to private investment, but that Ottawa will maintain ownership of airport land.
The prime minister said the private money will be sought through “long-term concessions” to operate these airports, which would include Toronto Pearson International Airport, Vancouver International Airport, Trudeau International Airport in Montreal and Calgary International Airport.
“The government of Canada will retain ownership of the underlying land and assets, but we will unlock their true value by bringing in new capital and expertise to their operations and growth,” Carney said during an address at the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto on Tuesday morning.
“We will reinvest the tens of billions of dollars of capital we raise into the infrastructure that Canada needs for the next generation.”
Carney has invited over 100 of the world’s largest investors from around the world to the summit in the hopes of securing $1 trillion in investments in some 167 projects across Canada over the next five years.
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a plan Tuesday to seek investment to ‘unlock’ the value of Canada’s four largest airports. Carney, speaking at a major investment summit, provided few specifics but said the government would retain ownership of underlying land and assets.
During a question-and-answer session following his address, Carney said the government looked at other countries’ approaches to privatizing airports before deciding to keep land ownership.
“We’re getting the benefit of being late to this, if you will, because we’ve seen transactions that don’t work well … and we’re going to apply those lessons,” he said.
Past governments have flirted with the idea of privatizing major airports before, but Carney insisted this time will be “different.”
“We’re building this country in a more dangerous, divided, world … we need to retain fiscal discipline,” he told reporters during a news conference following his address.
“As we do that we need to be smart with how we use the assets we have.”
The prime minister said inking deals with private investors could net the public coffers “tens of billions of dollars.”
Members of the Liberal caucus met on Monday night to discuss airport “modernization,” a federal source told Radio-Canada. The source didn’t specifically mention privatization. CBC News is not naming the source because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
CTV and the Globe and Mail first reported that the government would make an announcement regarding private investment in airports.
Asked why the Liberal government is choosing to allow private investment in four of Canada’s largest airports now when prior governments rejected the plan, Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government is building the country in a more dangerous, divided and ‘hostile’ environment.
Lease extensions delayed, documents suggest
The government has been signalling its interest in privatizing Canada’s airports since November’s budget. May’s spring economic update said the government would introduce legislation to explore the possibility.
The federal government currently owns about two dozen large airports across the country and leases the grounds to non-profit airport authorities that are responsible for overseeing their operations. Those lease fees are worth $525 million per year, according to the Canadian Airports Council.
Last year’s budget also said the government is aiming to extend current ground lease agreements with airport authorities. A Transport Canada memo, obtained by CBC News via an access to information request, says the government sees lease extensions as a necessary step to “attract more private sector investment on airport lands.”
But that same memo suggests there has already been a delay in inking lease extensions. The memo says a decision to move forward with negotiations would need to be made by March 2026, otherwise it would “delay the lease extension process by several months into 2027.”
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Transport Steven MacKinnon didn’t sign the memo until May, more than a month after the stated target date.
A number of the attendees are Canadian and international pension funds. Pension funds typically see airports as a safe investment and Canadian pension funds, like the Canada Pension Plan and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, have held shares in private airports overseas.
“It’s time to bring that same expertise back home to more directly benefit Canadians,” Carney said.
John Gradek, a faculty lecturer in aviation management at McGill University in Montreal, says allowing private money to invest in airports can help bolster infrastructure while netting the government some revenue.
“There’s a lot of money that has to be invested in airports in Canada because we’ve been slow in putting that money in,” he said.
“Right now, the only vehicle that’s available to the airport authorities are either in the bond market or on the backs of passengers.”
Labour congress pans privatization
The Canadian Labour Congress issued a statement on Tuesday calling on the government to reconsider the idea of allowing investors to operate airports.
“The government is pointing to Australia as its model, and we’ve already seen the results there: higher costs for passengers and airlines, pressure on workers and more airport revenue flowing to private investors,” spokesperson Lily Chang wrote in the statement.
“In the middle of a trade war, handing profitable public infrastructure over to private investors is exactly the wrong move.”
Rod Sims, former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, previously told CBC News that privatizing airports should come with increased regulation, such as a price cap on airport fees.
Sims’ suggestion is based on Australia’s experience with airport privatization in the early 2000s. He said airports in large countries that rely on air travel, like Canada and Australia, operate as near monopolies if there aren’t reasonable, nearby alternatives for flights.
“I can’t give a view on whether you should or shouldn’t privatize in Canada, but do it with your eyes open,” he said in an interview in May.
