Ted Barris

It happened one morning a couple of weeks ago. I was driving down Brock Road in the southbound rush-hour east of Toronto. In the stop-and-go-traffic just below the village of Brougham – near the intersection of Brock and Hwy 407 – I pulled up beside a pickup truck with a construction logo on the door. I had my window down. So did he.

“Construction season’s started, eh?” I said so the guy could hear me.

“Oh yeah,” he said and smiled. He seemed glad to be working.

“Big time 407 overpass?” I asked. It looked to me as if the next phase of the Ontario toll highway (extending from Brock Road east as far as Hwy 35/115) has passed environmental assessment and will soon be under construction. And I guess that will mean where that bottleneck south of Brougham is today will soon become just another 407 overpass.

“Big time is right!” he said emphatically. The light changed and we both went our separate ways. I don’t know why, but his emphatic “Big time” stuck in my head. And not long afterward, I noticed the heavy construction in the farm fields east of Brougham. In other words, not only are they building a 407 overpass, but more like four lanes making Brock Road more a major thoroughfare than an improved country road. It wasn’t a day or two later that the federal minister of finance blindsided all of us with his statement about “ending the uncertainty.”

There was Jim Flaherty, June 11, during what appeared to be a photo opportunity with Glen Murray, provincial transportation minister, Peter Kent, federal minister of the environment, and Chris Alexander, local MP, symbolically planting a seedling tree. The point of the exercise, it seemed, was announcing federal plans for an expanded and protected Rouge Park.

“The Harper government is moving forward with a responsible and balanced plan for the development and preservation of the Pickering lands,” Minister Flaherty said. Then he added that a third of the lands (expropriated by the federal government in 1972) would expand the Rouge Urban National Park, a third would be designated for economic development, and a third would go to the construction of a new airport for the GTA by 2027. As reported in the Toronto Star, the Ontario transportation minister was totally caught off guard.

“We’ve had no prior discussion (of an airport,)” Murray said.

Indeed, there’s been no public discussion of the Pickering Airport (since the 1990s), but like the apparent expansion of that stretch of Brock Road, I mentioned, to look more like the 401 than an upgraded country road, I suggest there’s a lot more in this airport announcement than meets the eye. If one looks into the fog, one sees the telltale signs of this airport juggernaut sparking prolonged controversy yet again (as in the 1970s and 1990s.)

First, the Harper Conservatives say, the GTA needs a new airport. If they checked their own federal statistics (as noted by the anti-airport Green Durham Association) they might discover, in 1972 Transport Canada projected that 62 million passengers per year would pass through Pearson by the year 2000; yet statistics indicated in 2012 that Pearson processed about 35 million, just more than half its projection for 2000.

Second, the same administration seems to have ignored the functionality of the Hamilton International Airport just down the road. The Greater Toronto Airports Authority projects that Pearson, Hamilton and Waterloo airports will reach capacity in 15-to-25 years. However, the same body also says that any need for a new mega-airport could be 30-to-50 years away. In other words, even the professional fact-gatherers themselves admit the need for a new GTA airport facility may be greatly exaggerated.

The third area of concern, I see, is the way the airport lands have been abused since they were expropriated. Not only were most of the original farm families kicked off the land, so were their ecologically sound farming practices. In the years since those farmers were sent packing, large corporate farm interests have moved in, knocked down hedgerows for easier mass production, and turned the land into food factories. Yes, the corporate farming has yielded produce, but it’s also hastened the soil’s deterioration, so that all it can support one day is pavement under jumbos and air buses.

At the Land Over Landings rally/meeting in Brougham Monday night, I learned perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the federal government announcement to resurrect the Pickering Airport. Apparently, that photo op of the ministers planting the tree for the Rouge Urban National Park, near Claremont, wasn’t all it appeared. The planting and photographs were taken behind a barrier that prevented the public – in particular the Land Over Landings people – from attending.

I seem to remember the same strong-arm tactics in the 1970s when the feds launched plans for Mirabel Airport near Montreal. We all know what happened to that white elephant.