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Use the land
As reported here last week, the federal department of transportation has released a study (conveniently a few weeks after we went to the polls, so that it could not become an election issue) concluding that a new GTA airport will definitely be needed in the foreseeable future, perhaps as early as 2027, and that the site set aside in North Pickering and surrounding municipalities (including Uxbridge) remains the ideal location for such a facility. It therefore recommends that the 19,000 acres expropriated almost 40 years ago continue to be reserved for the purpose.
This is disappointing though hardly surprising news for the opponents of the airport, who would prefer that the project be abandoned altogether and the land returned to farming, the houses re-sold and everything returned to the way it was in 1971.
That’s obviously not going to happen. But at least now we have a date to hang our hats on, although projections of a start-up date for the Pickering Airport have been boldly predicted before, before being left in the dust. Even if the airport ultimately happens, 2027 is only the earliest possible date; the probability is that very few of you reading these words will ever get the opportunity to see an aircraft land on its runways.
Uxbridge Mayor Gerri Lynn O’Connor may be right that the airport, if and when it happens, would be of economic benefit to this municipality, through the construction phase and beyond. But in the meantime?
In the meantime the lands are of absolutely no use to anyone, and that situation has gone on for far too long. The government’s management of the expropriated lands has been overwhelmingly characterized by a policy of “malignant neglect”, allowing perfectly good housing to become uninhabitable (to the point where a number of buildings, including several in the Altona area, were recently torn down), and farmland that could have produced tons of crops over the last four decades, to become grown over to the point where considerable work would have to be done just to make it productive again.
But with at least 16 years to go before a new airport is now even contemplated to begin construction on the property, it is unconscionable for the government to continue to neglect the Pickering Lands. The GTAA should be directed to immediately assess the farms for their capacity to grow, and within a couple of years, get them back into useful production wherever possible. The GTAA could market the crops, but there should be financial incentives for farmers to work the fields, perhaps a significant percentage of the profit from crop sales.
Until they are ultimately paved over for runways (and we’re still not convinced that is ever going to happen), these acres deserve the chance to do again what they used to do so well: grow food. If the airport does go up, they will have at least contributed to the economy (and the dinner table) in the meantime. And if the Pickering Airport never comes to be, the transition to becoming once more part of the agricultural mainstream will be that much easier.
