Canada's airports, run by nonprofits that reinvest over $30 billion in infrastructure since the 1990s, rank among the world's best. The federal government is considering privatization anyway, which would raise fees for passengers and threaten essential services in remote regions that depend on regional airports.
Chapters
The federal government is thinking about selling Canadian airports to private shareholders, and that would be a terrible idea. Now, if you're not from Canada, you might be confused. Here in Canada, almost all of our airports are run by local not-for-profits. There are no shareholders. Every surplus dollar goes back into runways and terminals and gates. It's a boring system, which is exactly why it works. Since the early 1990s, Canadian airports have reinvested more than $30 billion into their own infrastructure, almost entirely from fees that they generated themselves. The World Economic Forum has ranked Canada's air transportation infrastructure among the best on the planet. Our airports are clean, they are well-staffed, they're weirdly good. Our airports are a roaring success story, which in Canadian terms means it's time to fuck it all up. The Transport Minister told reporters the government is in the early stages of a process, which is Ottawa for we haven't figured out who to sell this to yet. The Finance Minister pointed to the UK as a model worth studying, as if the Brits crafted some thoughtful nuanced ownership arrangement. No, they just sold their airports. Heathrow is now partly owned by the Saudi government. Our finance minister finds this model inspiring. I'm choosing to believe he hasn't been fully briefed. I'm also choosing to believe he's never changed planes at Heathrow. The claim is that private ownership will help lower airfares, but you have to be willfully ignoring centuries of how capitalism works to believe that. Airport privatization almost always raises fees because private owners need their returns. Those increased fees get passed along to the airlines, and the airlines just piss that cost down to you in the price of a ticket to Saskatoon. Canada is an enormous country with thin population density and communities that depend on regional airports for medical access, a basic connectivity, and just the simple fact of not being stranded. Private investors make decisions based solely on return on investment, which we should not fault them for. That's their job. That's the system. And it is entirely wrong system for owning the airport a medevac needs at midnight in January. A hedge fund does not care about your burst appendix. Nothing in Canada's airports is broken. The only thing this would do is fix that.
