At the Canada Investment Summit in September, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that the government intended to procure brownfield concessions to operate the country’s four largest airports: Toronto Pearson, Montréal Trudeau, Vancouver International, and Calgary International.
“Following best practice in other countries, the Government of Canada will retain ownership of the underlying land and assets, but we will unlock their true value, by bringing in new capital and expertise into their operations and growth,” said Carney. “We will reinvest the tens of billions of dollars of capital we raise into the infrastructure that Canada needs for the next generation.”
The speech indicates that the Canadian government is making serious progress towards a brownfield airport concession program, which was floated earlier this year alongside a plan to create a new Canada Strong Fund – a sovereign wealth fund to invest in Canadian infrastructure projects. It isn’t clear whether any concession fees generated by the brownfield concessions will be invested in the Canada Strong Fund or invested directly into other infrastructure projects by the government. In his Canada Investment Summit remarks, Carney also said that “through our new sovereign wealth fund, the Canada Strong Fund, Canadians themselves will retain a stake in the future value we create.” However, it currently isn’t clear whether the government is envisioning the new sovereign fund to actual participate in the financing of the planned airport concessions.
No procurement or formal tender process is underway for any of the airport concessions. Canada’s airports are currently operated by nonprofit airport authorities under long-term ground leases from the national government. The terms and durations of any brownfield concessions for the airports are still to be determined, and the Canadian government has indicated that it would complete additional consultations with stakeholders in the coming weeks before finalizing plans. At a parliamentary debate in late September, Canada’s Minister of Transport Steven MacKinnon indicated that the government planned to regulate the airport improvement charge fees that the concessionaires could charge, stating that they “are unregulated today. We intend to regulate them.”
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