$150M spent on land without a plan
Area for Pickering airport was expropriated in 1972, but nothing has ever been built
Over the past 19 years, the Canadian government has spent more than $150 million maintaining Pickering land it seized in the ’70s — for an airport that’s never been built.
And while $59.2 million of that sum is listed for site repairs and maintenance, a group of local advocates say they’ve watched as properties under federal management were left to rot and the tenants evicted before the buildings were demolished.
“Many of those were perfectly livable houses if they had been maintained by the landlord as they should have been,” Mary Delaney, a resident of the land and chairperson of the anti-airport advocacy group Land Over Landings, told the Star.
The saga began in 1972, when the government of Pierre Trudeau expropriated 7,530 hectares of land in Markham, Pickering and Uxbridge to build an airport, to take pressure off what is now Pearson International Airport. But after waves of fiery protest made national headlines, the plan was cancelled.
The federal government kept control of the land and, to this day, politicians at all levels of government — municipal, provincial and federal — are wrestling with what to do and whether an airport will finally be built.
In the meantime, according to information obtained via an Access to Information request and followup with the federal Ministry of Transport, the unplanned land is costing up to tens of millions per year, on top of unknown costs for the expropriation itself and maintenance pre-1998.
Transport Canada spokesperson Julie Leroux said that the maintenance of properties on the land — a legal obligation for Transport Canada post-expropriation, as they rent out the homes left on the land — can rack up “considerable expenses.”
The homes average 80 years of age, she added, saying it’s especially difficult to maintain properties in a privately serviced rural area. The land in question doesn’t have municipal sewers, operating on wells and septic systems.
However, to Delaney, a $7.89-million cost for mould assessment and abatement from 1999 to 2010 raises questions about the quality of site maintenance at the time.
“In those days, that was the big thing. The houses have mould,” she said. “Why, only right here, did all these houses have mould? . . . If they did, and some did, it’s because they weren’t being maintained properly.”
She cited poorly maintained roofs, wells and eaves leading to the mould.
Upkeep in recent years has been significantly better, she said, giving credit to Ajax (former Ajax-Pickering) MP Mark Holland for advocating the issue.
In 2009, Holland released a damning statement about Transport Canada’s 2005 attempt to raze a property on the Pickering lands under a mould claim. He wrote that, after his office pressured for a third-party assessment, no evidence of mould could be found on the property.
“Transport Canada has a history of resorting to deceptive tactics when carrying out evictions and demolitions in order to avoid public backlash,” his statement reads.
Speaking to the Star, Holland said there was “a real cost to the mismanagement of those lands,” noting that the price tag on maintenance got “exorbitantly high” as a result of poor oversight over properties.
“It’s easy to say it was when I was in opposition, but look, it’s been happening a long time,” he said. “Whether or not it was planned negligence, or whether it was just negligence, the homes that were being maintained on those lands were allowed to get into a terrible state of repair.”
Since 1999, $5.5 million has been spent on demolition.
But, even as some tenants have left the land, the federal government is responsible for paying a sum of money to local municipalities in lieu of taxes. That money, since 1999, has totalled $36 million.
Environmental assessment and abatement has cost an additional $26.3 million over the past 19 years, though environment-related costs have been significantly lower since 2011-12 — the same year the government announced the creation of Rouge National Urban Park, later allotted some 21 square kilometres of the expropriated space.
Salaries for those working on the Pickering file have gone up over the years, from a collective of around $200,000 a year in 1999 to approximately $900,000 in 2016.
Additional staff was assigned starting in 2011-12, Leroux said, to work on major Canadian government projects related to the site. These included planning for the Rouge National Urban Park, as well as areas such as zoning regulations, land use identifications and site orders.
Since 1999, the salaries of those working on the Pickering project have cost the government $9.8 million. Other costs incurred over the years include $3 million in capital projects and $2 million in green space improvement.
The final cost category, aviation forecast and planning, only cropped up in 2005-06 — racking up the smallest overall total at $1.6 million. Leroux says Transport Canada is committed to maintaining the lands in the most “fiscally prudent manner” possible as the debate over the land continues.
As Land Over Landings fundraises $85,000 for its own agricultural study, Delaney says the millions the government has spent on the land without a concrete plan for the future is disappointing.
“The waste here is at ground level,” she said.