Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow is condemning the Toronto Port Authority over what she describes as excessive secrecy surrounding the future of Billy Bishop airport, saying the city has been kept in the dark about a major expansion plan. According to the mayor, the authority asked her and city staff to sign a non-disclosure agreement before discussing the plans. The dispute has fueled accusations of secrecy swirling around City Hall.
Chow says she has not seen what she calls the secret plan, nor a consultant's report explaining why the project is expected to cost between four and five billion dollars, or how it would be paid for. "Why are they asking the mayor of the city of Toronto to sign some kind of non-disclosure?" she said. "If it is confidential, I'll keep it confidential. Do they not trust me?"
The mayor says she refused to sign the agreement and never will, but that some city staff have signed it. Even so, she says, what that access actually achieved remains unclear, because staff who did sign the federal agency's NDA still did not get to see the consultant report she has been trying to read. "They're definitely hiding something from the city," one critic said, adding that people are sick of the secrecy around the airport plan.
The friction follows a meeting on May 19th tied to the province's heritage, infrastructure and cultural policies, where the Port Authority's president and chief executive, RJ Steenstra, said the province and the federal government had seen some aspects of the plan to expand the airport for jets, while the city had not. At the time, he described the gap as just a scheduling issue. Meetings with the city took place earlier this month, but the mayor says they did not yield meaningful details.
Some councillors say the demand for non-disclosure agreements has given them a sense of deja vu, recalling how Sidewalk Labs once tried to get people to sign NDAs in a project that ultimately collapsed. The typical pattern, one councillor noted, is that signing the agreement brings a full briefing, while declining to sign leaves officials with only a small briefing and much information withheld.
The standoff is unfolding after the province passed legislation to take over the city's stake in the tripartite agreement that governs the airport and to expropriate some of its land for the expansion. The city, meanwhile, has major redevelopments planned for the area in and around the waterfront, and staff have found that the airport plan, whatever its final form, could affect thousands of potential housing units.
One official described the situation as one of the biggest messes the city has found itself in. The Toronto Port Authority declined to answer questions for the story, and it remains unclear whether anyone from the provincial or federal governments was also asked to sign non-disclosure agreements as the expansion plans move forward.