November 29, 2006

Northern airports need funds

TORONTO

Northern Ontario mayors say their communities can no longer shoulder the cost of maintaining aging airstrips, and warn that without government help, the airports will pose a safety risk as they continue to deteriorate.

The current system — which sees municipalities cover 100 per cent of the bill — is “unfair” to northern towns that don’t have the same tax base as those in the south, said Wawa mayor Rod Morrison.

“We’re not in the airport business,” he said “We’re in the municipal government business, but because there’s no other source of funding, we struggle along and take very scarce resources and apply some to the airport.”

Morrison is one of a group of mayors who have formed a task force to lobby the province for money.

Their position is supported by a study done on behalf of the Airport Management Conference of Ontario, a group representing airport operators. The report, released in September, found that municipal airports are facing financial difficulty.

The province hasn’t covered the cost of municipal airports since 1998 when, like many other services, the costs were downloaded to the municipal level.

Ottawa hasn’t been much help, either: the federal government’s Airports Capital Assistance Program only gives grants to airports that handle at least 1,000 regularly scheduled passengers a year. Airports in Ontario’s vast north get nowhere near that level of traffic, but remain just as vital — and almost as expensive — as their larger cousins, the mayors argue.

Brian Browne, a spokesman with Transport Canada in Ottawa, said there’s no review planned to include smaller airports in the federal assistance program.

“For us, it’s not part of our thinking, (and) it’s not currently in our budget,” said Ontario Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield. The ministry already supports 29 remote airports, all of which are on northern reserves, she said.

Without outside help, some of these municipalities will be forced to turn their runways into gravel strips or close them down entirely, said New Democrat northern critic Gilles Bisson.

“You start taking away the infrastructure of transportation in northern Ontario, then it’s less attractive for business to come,” he said. “You’re isolating those communities even more.”

Transport 2000, an Ottawa-based advocacy group, says governments pay too much attention to highways and rail systems, and not enough to the rundown airports.

“The province has a role in investing in these facilities to make sure that they are safe and functional,” said Brendan Rad, the group’s vice-president.

“These airports are as vital to the province’s transportation network as highways and as railways.”

CANADIAN PRESS

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