It has come to my attention that the Liberal government has approved the construction of the Georgina Aerodrome, completely ignoring the concerns of area residents.
For months, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra has refused to be transparent and open about the status of this proposal, and even misled Parliament when he suggested that no decision had been made. In fact, approval has been given, and construction can begin at any time.
This flawed approval process ignored the significant issues raised by myself and members of the community, including a lack of consultation by the proponents; environmental impacts; limited suitability and capacity for air traffic; and a lack of transparency surrounding the aerodrome’s proponents and objectives.
We have already seen corporations in places like Greenbank, Burlington, and Tottenham use loopholes in federal aerodrome regulations to exploit municipal soil laws for financial gain. They do this to dump tonnes of contaminated fill at a significant cost to the environment and to local taxpayers ─ but the Liberals have ignored this problem and did not even consider it when approving this aerodrome.
The Liberal government’s mishandling of this matter confirms once more that they are out of touch with the needs of communities like ours.
As the Conservative MP for York-Simcoe, I condemn this decision. I will continue to oppose the Georgina Aerodrome, and will work to close the loopholes so fill can’t be dumped using federal aviation regulations.