Pickering Airport Lands

[1] Since then, the federal government has leased the lands to private tenants and allocated more than half to form the Rouge National Urban Park.

Preliminary airport construction activity was halted in 1975 when the provincial partner in the enterprise, the Government of Ontario, declared it would not build the roads or sewers needed to service the site.

Since the shelving of the project in 1975, the federal government has commissioned a number of studies to assess future aviation needs in southern Ontario.

In January 2025 the Federal Government officially cancelled all plans for the Pickering Airport and will begin looking at transferring the remaining lands to the Rouge National Park.

[10] In December 1971, the province told the federal government that it could not afford to service both a Beverly and a Pickering site and that it had committed funds to build sewer and water facilities only to the east of Toronto.

The federal government retained its ownership of the lands expropriated for the Pickering airport, reserving the option to revive the project at some point in the future.

After the airport construction was stopped, the federal government began to lease the site's farmland and houses to tenants, some of them former owners of the properties.

[15] In 2002, the federal government announced a plan to preserve 3,051 hectares (7,540 acres) of the site, no longer needed for the airport, as green space in perpetuity, providing a corridor of land connecting the Rouge Park with the Oak Ridges Moraine.

[19] The draft plan went into limbo when Transport Canada announced on May 9, 2007,[20] that the GTAA had now been commissioned to complete "a needs assessment study for a potential Pickering airport".

The study's report recommended that the federal government retain the Pickering lands, "thereby preserving the option of building an airport, if and when required".

On July 11, 2015, the Prime Minister announced that the federal government is transferring an additional 2,100 hectares (5,200 acres) in Pickering and Uxbridge to the Rouge National Urban Park.

Our Government will only support projects on these lands, including an airport, if they are backed by a sound business plan and if they are in the best interests of this community.

She also indicated that an independent advisor would be appointed to consult with local public and private interests on potential economic opportunities on the site, including a future airport, and would report back to the government within 12 months.

[33] In June 2016, Transport Canada's consultant, Dr. Gary Polonsky, presented his report on airport stakeholder viewpoints based on 64 individual and small-group interviews in 2015 and 2016.

[39] KPMG's full report, "Pickering Lands Aviation Sector Analysis" was released by Transport Canada on March 5, 2020.

Once the scope of the work is determined, Transport Canada will post a second Request for Proposals, seeking a third-party contractor to undertake the study as well as the consultation.

[45] On April 24, 2023, Pickering Council voted 6–1 to withdraw its previous support for an airport on the lands and to spend no more tax dollars or staff resources on the proposal.

As part of the same motion, Council voted unanimously to renew the city's support for a station near Green River in north Pickering for the federal government's proposed high-frequency rail line along the Quebec City–Windsor corridor.

[48] In August 1971, Ontario planners came to similar conclusions, stating that a Pickering airport would prevent the creation of two planned towns called Brock and Audley, destroy an area designated as a provincial agricultural and recreational preserve, and "have a major influence on the operation of Toronto International".

Representatives of the local anti-airport protest group, People or Planes, meeting in Ottawa in 1972 with Transport Minister Jean Marchand, were told by him that he did not want to be the "French Canadian who could be accused of not giving an airport to Ontario after having given one to Quebec [Mirabel]".

[53] Together with Minister Marchand's desire to give Toronto what he had just given Montreal, there was the advice of chief consultant Philip Beinhaker, of Peat Marwick and Partners, who, while admitting a preference for expanding Malton, had pronounced the expansion "politically unsaleable", in part because Malton and a vocal group of anti-expansion residents there were in Premier-in-waiting William Davis's electoral riding.

[54][55] Within months of the halt to construction at Pickering, new federal Transport Minister Otto Lang was announcing that no new air carriers would be allowed at Malton for at least five years.

Malton's general manager accused federal officials of stalling improvements to the airport as a way of making Ontario reverse its position and provide support infrastructure for Pickering after all.

In November 1978, Minister Lang told the House of Commons that Malton would not be expanded, and a study into a possible fourth runway was stopped.

[62] Pearson’s total passenger numbers climbed to 50.5 million in 2019, but the Covid-19 pandemic had a devastating impact on global aviation, starting with the first lockdowns in the spring of 2020.

[76] There is strong support for Pickering Airport from COPA flight 44 Canadian Owners and Pilots Association also known as the Buttonville Flying Club.

The closest large communities are Claremont (an exurban village of around 2,800 residents, located northeast of the airport lands in Pickering), and to the west, in York Region, the town of Stouffville and the city of Markham.