Prime Minister Mark Carney says his government will open up Canada’s four largest airports to private investment, but that Ottawa will maintain ultimate ownership of airport lands.
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.
Canada seeking private investment for 4 large airports, Carney says
During a question-and-answer session following his address, Carney said the government looked at other countries’ approaches to privatizing airports before landing on a decision 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.
Members of the Liberal caucus met Monday night to discuss airport “modernization,” a separate 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.
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.”
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 told CBC News in an interview.
“Right now, the only vehicle that’s available to the airport authorities are either in the bond market or on the backs of passengers.”
