Land Over Landings: No to New Airport, Yes to Food

Historic Brougham Hall

Yesterday I traveled to Pickering, a suburb just east of Toronto, to learn about a breaking story 45 years in the making. Since the early 1970s people east of Toronto have been fighting plans for a big new airport.  In the late 1960s the federal government bought 20,000 acres of land; only in 1975, after huge protests, were the plans for the airport shelved.

But the plans clung to life, zombie-like. And in the meantime, thousands of acres of good farmland were kept in suspended animation: still owned by Transport Canada, and on one-year leases that discouraged investment, and even basic maintenance, ensuring the slow decline of once-lively farming communities.

Over the last few years half this land has been protected, including in the new Rouge National Urban Park.  But the remaining 9600 acres still remained available for airport development.

Land Over Landings (LOL), a local community group, hosted the event yesterday, to release a report on the potential of the land as a showplace for agriculture and tourism. The economists who wrote this report gave an overview of their results, showing how serious economic benefits could be had if only this land could be given its own future, with long-term leases for farmers and others that would allow them to build a new local economy.

What was especially interesting in all this was that LOL wasn't just opposing an airport, but presenting a vision of what these lands could be.  And it's really exciting: combining the history of the land with all the possibilities inherent in thousands of acres of great soil right next door to six million people.  The benefits include local food security, economic development, and avoiding all the impacts of a major new airport.  One of the lines yesterday that got the most applause was that this place could become "the lungs of Toronto".  That's quite a vision.