Should Canada Privatize Airports? 🤔 The TRUTH About Prime Minister Mark Carney's Idea

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:01]Welcome to the Bill Kelly podcast.

[00:00:03]Critical discussions in critical times.

[00:00:06]Here's your host, Bill Kelly.

[00:00:13]Hi, welcome to another edition of the Bill Kelly podcast. Critical discussions in these critical times. I'm your host, Bill Kelly. Good to have you with us today. Uh we did another uh Bill Kelly podcast live stream just last evening.

[00:00:25]Had a wonderful time, a very lively session. And one of the topics that gained an awful lot of attention uh was a headline in a story from the CBC just a couple of days ago. Uh it was Canada's government is looking at privatizing airports. What would that accomplish? It was a piece that was written by Darren Major from CBC News. And uh as soon as you mention the word privatization these days, uh there are you're bound to get an opinion. Um and and let's talk a little bit about that. There are some people that are just dead set against the whole idea. You know, you don't want to hand this over to the private sector.

[00:00:55]Those are people that just, you know, they put profits over people and, you know, they'll drain the the place and just make tons of money in the it's just a bad bad deal. Well, that's one line of thinking. There's some validation for that, but we'll get into that in a couple of minutes. The others are saying, look, it we're strapped for cash here. Not just the federal government, provincial governments, municipal governments, state governments in the states, uh they're looking for ways to be more economical and at the same time deliver services. is a is a a privatization or a hybrid of of this possibility. Well, the government's going to have to make a call on this pretty soon. And I can understand uh the the the reticence by some people here in the province of Ontario uh where I've lived all of my life. Uh we we've had some bad examples with that with our provincial governments. Uh some years ago, back in in the 1990s, uh the provincial government built Highway 407 in southern Ontario. It was supposed to go from Burlington, the Hamilton, Burlington area, all the way to the the far end of Toronto. And they said right off the outside, it's going to be a toll highway, but it's try to relieve all the gridlock of all the traffic going into Toronto. Okay, that makes sense. Well, not too long after that, a subsequent provincial government was in financial trouble, you know, and and to try to find cash, they started selling off assets, and one of them was the 407, and they sold it lock, stock, and barrel to to a foreign entity. and and that raised a lot of anger, including me, myself, because they just gave away an asset. I mean, we as taxpayers paid billions and billions of dollars to get this thing built with the understanding that, okay, if we're going to use it, we're going to have to pay tolls. Well, we just with that government, they just gave all that toll money to somebody else. And they gave them a sweetheart deal, too. I mean, even the provincial police here patrol the highway for these guys, but the fines, you know, everything it goes to these guys. And and by the way, the fees to travel on that that highway are outrageous. And what makes it even more painful is the fact that we know that we have paying an outrageous fee and it's not even staying here. It's not even going to the government. But that governments tend to make those sorts of decisions. Another was Sky Dome. You baseball fan, you know, where the Toronto Blue Jays play, it's called the Rogers Center now. But when it was built back in the uh the 1980s, it was built by the Ontario taxpayers and it cost us a ton of money. And that was a very very debatable issue at that time. you know, why should people in different parts of the province pay for a baseball stadium in Toronto? But we did and uh the government owned it and uh they did not do well. It was losing money. So few years later, the government of the day decided to sell it to a private entity.

[00:03:26]It was well Rogers Entertainment for pennies on the dollar for all the money that we paid for it. They got like I say just a couple of dollars. It was ridiculous what they got for it and they turned it over and Rogers of course has turned it into a profitable situation.

[00:03:41]So what's the takeaway? What's the message to be learned from this? It's do it properly. Do your homework. Uh and when you governments are doing something where they don't pay attention and they just get f fixated on the fact, wow, we can make a lot of money off this short term. They didn't tend to think about the long-term implications. Uh so this is this is a lesson to be learned. And I know the government, the federal government anyway, who's talking about this uh I seems to be understanding about what's going on here. So let me let me just put this in context here too. Uh the the story is not that the federal government is going to privatize airports. It's that they're looking into it. According to the document, this is right from the CBC story, the government is assessing opportunities to unlock the full value of airports in support of investments in Canada's long-term growth, including through alternative models of ownership. Uh they said, "We're going to look at options for the airports so that they can better serve Canadians and so that the capital that's tied up in these airports can be redeployed potentially in other ventures that are going to grow the economy."

[00:04:40]That's according to a statement that Prime Minister Carney made about this the other day. That that makes sense, doesn't it? But as the old phrase goes, the devil will be in the details here, right? So let's talk a little bit about that and exactly how this could work and how it could actually be beneficial too.

[00:04:55]Uh you need to know that when they're talking about uh federal airports, the federal government uh currently owns about two dozen uh airports across the country including well Toronto Pearson Airport, Vancouver International, Calgary airport, uh Trudeau airport in Montreal. So this is you know some big business here. Okay, how these guys work is they they lease these airports out to to somebody else as a management company and they manage the airports. Okay, uh and they're the ones that are responsible for fees, etc., etc., etc. They charge the airlines money to use that. You know, people that use P the airlines that use Pearson Airport pay a fee to to the Greater Toronto Airport Authority. And uh same thing with all the other airports, too. And they generate those fees about $525 million a year according to the Canadian Airports Council. That's a big number, isn't it?

[00:05:43]$525 million just from the fees from the other the airlines that are using the airport. She has figured, well, okay, that that should handle everything and pay for costs. It doesn't even come close to the cost of running an airport.

[00:05:54]Uh John Grade is a guy that I've had on the the radio show for many many years.

[00:05:58]Uh and get him on here as often as I can on the podcast. Uh he's a an aeronautical expert of course at McGill University. And he says that that $500 million that the government breaks in from the airports is a drop in the bucket compared to the money that's needed to do infrastructure replacements. And that's something that governments are not really good at is is maintaining infrastructure. You know, there's always a great big to-do and a big ribbon cutting and a big announcement that we're going to build something like a new airport or even, you know, a building, whatever the case might be. Uh they don't do a very good job of maintaining them. And that's become part of a problem. And airports are like that, too. And you're a homeowner, you know exactly what we're talking about. Even if you own a car, whatever it is, an asset, if you don't maintain it, if you don't do get the oil changes, get the tires checked, if you don't fix the roof every now and then in your house, it's going to fall apart.

[00:06:46]And airports are in terrible disrepair right now right across the country. So, they're saying, "Well, we can't afford it." Uh, the federal government is saying, "We can't have we just don't have the money to do all these major improvements to it. So, what do we do?"

[00:06:58]Well, we can't increase the fees at the airports themselves. They're already outlandishly high. So do you look at a situation like this where somebody else takes over? If that does happen, one of the plus sides, and this is again we're talking, you know, a conceptual basis here, but it has happened in other places. One of the plus sides is it could attract private investment to help run the airport and to run the the maintenance costs. And it's happening in other parts of the world that have done this. And there's some good stories and some bad stories about that. Let's be clear about that. But here in Canada, uh we have some pension funds here that are just flush with cash and they are looking for places to invest that money.

[00:07:37]Canada pension plans, one of them, uh the Ontario Teachers, uh pension plan, which is a a very successful pension plan. There's another example. And both of those plans apparently have invested in private airports in other parts of the world, and they're doing quite well.

[00:07:51]Thank you very much. Wouldn't it be great if we could have that kind of investment with Canadian dollars, these Canadian pension funds here in Canada?

[00:07:59]Well, they can't because they can't invest in airports here because they're not privatized. That might open that opportunity up. And again, we don't know for sure, but that could be a win-win situation. And then what would happen is these enterprises with this this investment from outside agencies and outside companies would pay the maintenance costs on this and it it would ease the burden on taxpayers. We as taxpayers, we're tapped out right now. And the airports that are or even the companies that are running the airports for the federal government now are saying, "Look, we don't have the money for these improvements anyway. Got to fix the runways. Got to fix the uh the the terminals. That's all all got to be done. Where can we get the money? Maybe privatizing or doing some sort of a partnership might be the answer." Now, I mentioned this the other day on on the live stream and immediately one guy is particular, oh, Bill says he's he's endorsing privatization. No, not necessarily. Here's what I'm saying.

[00:08:54]It's an option that needs to be explored. And I want my government, whether it's the municipal government, the provincial government, the the federal government, I want them to explore every possible opportunity to maximize the use of every tax dollar that they take from me and you and everyone else. I just don't say, "Well, we've always done it this way, so this is the way we're going to continue to do it." Maybe there are better ways, and maybe there is a way uh for this to work, for the privatization to work. And that's a big maybe. I get that. Uh and I know that in the story from CBC uh they use the example of Australia which privatized their airports uh some years ago and uh one of the concerns there uh was raised by a guy named Rod Sims who's the former chair of the Australian competition and uh consumer commission and he says ever since they did this the the prices at the airports have just gone through the roof. So he says, "Yeah, the taxpayers saved money because you know that they didn't have to use their money to do all these improvements, but the people that use the airports, the air travelers are paying through the roof right now, through the nose." And and he says, "That's just not right." Well, does that mean you don't do it? Not necessarily.

[00:10:01]The details here and the way that this has to happen where it can be a win-win, it all comes down to how is the contract structured.

[00:10:09]Who's going to be responsible for what?

[00:10:11]What we found out from the Australian situation, it's as bad as it sounds, is the Australian government when they sold to a private entity, said, "Yeah, you know what? All those regulations we've got and consumer safety protections, we'll throw those out you because we we don't want to prohibit you guys from making cash and making this profitable."

[00:10:28]So, they just all the guardrails that were in place are gone. Well, you can't do that. That's not fair to the consumer. It's certainly not fair to the taxpayer. It was a bad deal. And it was constructed that way as a bad deal. So, what can we learn from that? If you're going to decide to go down this road and you're going to start looking, saying, "Okay, who's interested?" You've got to draw the deal up, the contract up in a way that's going to be beneficial. And those guard rails, those safety protections for air travelers, for taxpayers, everything else has to be included. And I think most private entities understand that. Most private companies understand that now that there has to be some cooperation, some give and take there. So, I'm not suggesting it's going to happen. Uh, I'm just suggesting it's something that I think we really need to look into in situations like this. So, don't when you hear that word privatization, don't automatically think that's just the wrong way to go. U, you know, government's owned operations are costing us an awful lot of money. And taxes keep going up and, you know, they're going to come back and we saw this example. We talked about this on the podcast just a couple of days ago.

[00:11:31]The official residence of the prime minister in this country is 24 Sussex.

[00:11:35]Uh, the prime minister doesn't live there. the previous prime minister didn't live there because that building's falling down because previous governments failed to do any work on on maintenance for the house and now it's a the question they're asking now is you just knock it down and build something else or just what do we do? If you don't get the work done there's going to be a concern and airports are concerned about this and the federal government is rightly concerned about that. So the question arises do we privatize or don't? Well, my suggestion is before you make a decision on something like that, what I suggest you do is do the homework, okay? Look at other situations, look at what's available and and see who else is doing what and what you can learn from this.

[00:12:18]It's it's not a yes or no answer at this stage because we don't have all the information. What I've always suggested we do, and I've talked about this a dozen times, more on the podcast, is before governments make a decision, do the homework. And please, for our sake and for the taxpayers's sake, make an informed decision.

[00:12:38]That's it for this edition of the podcast. Glad that you are with us today. If you uh like the work that we're doing, and we certainly hope that you do, uh please share it. Just tap hype on of course on YouTube and make sure that you share the story with others, too. Thank you, by the way, to all the folks that are jumping on board and subscribing to the podcast. It means a lot to us. And uh it also helps us to continue to do the research and uh the work that we do on this podcast. So, please uh keep that coming. And to those that have already subscribed, thank you once again for your support for that. I talked about the the live stream at the beginning of the show here today. Uh we do that every Thursday at 7:00 Eastern time. That's of course 4:00 Pacific on the uh on the West Coast or wherever you're listening to the podcast because I know we have listeners globally all over the world in Scandinavia, down in Australia, and over in Europe, too, and down in the States. Hi to our American friends, too. Uh so check it out. if you haven't joined the the live stream yet.

[00:13:28]Uh make sure you check that out on Thursday evenings. Okay. Uh thanks as always to my daughter Maline Kelly. She does the the all the technical work.

[00:13:35]She's the one that puts this stuff out here for us. She does an outstanding job every day. Thank you Maline for your great work on putting this one together, too. Until next time, I'm Bill Kelly.

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