Billy Bishop Airport: Little Norway Park Land Grab

On April 23, 2026, Ontario tabled Bill 110, the Building Billy Bishop Airport Act, 2026, which lists eight land parcels by PIN — including all 2.4 hectares of Little Norway Park at Queen's Quay West and Bathurst Street. The park contains a baseball diamond, wading pool, and children's playground. It sits directly adjacent to Waterfront Elementary School, The City School, the Lakeside Waterfront Child Care centre, and the Waterfront Neighbourhood Centre. Toronto City Council responded on April 24 with a 14-point motion directing the City Solicitor to pursue legal action and requesting the federal government disallow the provincial land grab.

The province's stated rationale is "access and congestion" — the Toronto Port Authority said the land is needed to "alleviate pinch-points and congestion," language consistent with parking infrastructure and road works. No design plan has been published. No environmental assessment has been initiated. No amendment to the bill limits or protects the park. Mayor Olivia Chow said it "doesn't take a big stretch of the imagination" to see where this leads — parking lots on a children's playground beside two schools. The province's verbal assurance that the park will remain a park is not reflected anywhere in the legislation.

The scope of Bill 110 goes well beyond Little Norway Park. The bill's expropriation schedule captures almost all city-owned Toronto Islands land, including Hanlan's Point and non-residential Ward's Island parcels. The Globe and Mail reported that Ontario could seize most of the Toronto Islands under the proposed legislation. NDP critics have called it "another real estate scam." The Toronto Port Authority has separately indicated the runway extension into Lake Ontario could require up to 900 metres of new landmass. The province says it won't take all the land — but the bill says otherwise, and no amendment has been tabled.

This scandal is the direct legislative continuation of the Billy Bishop Airport Seizure. The same structural mechanism is at work: Bill 5's Special Economic Zone powers used to legislate the City of Toronto out of a 43-year-old tripartite agreement it signed — an agreement that explicitly bans jets and caps aircraft at 78-seat turboprops. Bill 110 deems the City of Toronto to have "assigned all of its rights and obligations under the Tripartite Agreement to the Crown." The province was never a party to the 1983 agreement. It is inserting itself by legislation, not negotiation.

The SEZ designation also has consequences for housing. Environmental Defence found that the airport flight path caps building heights in the western Portlands at roughly 15 storeys, eliminating the 19-to-46-storey towers planned for a mixed-income transit-oriented community. The result: approximately 14,000 planned homes blocked on a brownfield site where governments have already invested $1.4 billion in infrastructure. The province is blocking housing while claiming to serve the public interest.

Toronto City Council's April 24 response was sweeping. Motion 2026.MM40.46 — passed with 14 directives — instructed the City Solicitor to pursue legal action, requested the Prime Minister and federal government to "disallow this land grab," asked the province to fund the relocation of Waterfront Elementary School, The City School, the Lakeside Waterfront Child Care centre, and the Waterfront Neighbourhood Centre if the expansion proceeds, and offered residents within 500 metres of the airport the option to relocate at provincial expense. The motion also requested the province conduct an environmental assessment before proceeding with any expansion.

Air quality is an already-documented problem at Bathurst Quay. CBC News reported on ultrafine particle (UFP) research near Billy Bishop showing concentrations exceeding 100,000 particles per cubic centimetre during aircraft operations — a class of pollutant currently unregulated in Canada. The Toronto Atmospheric Fund estimated that a fivefold passenger increase at Billy Bishop could produce more than 300,000 tonnes of CO2e annually — the equivalent of over 70,000 gasoline-powered vehicles — directly incompatible with Toronto's legally mandated 65% emissions reduction by 2030.

Safety concerns are not theoretical. Billy Bishop does not yet have completed runway buffer zones — a Transport Canada requirement with a July 2027 deadline. In April 2024, a ferry breached airport security and struck the eastern runway; the city failed to report the incident for months. And less than 12 hours before Ford made his expansion announcement on March 23, two Canadian pilots were killed when an Air Canada Express jet collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport — a runway collision at a constrained urban airport that commentators immediately connected to the risks of expanding Billy Bishop for jets.

Federal jurisdiction is an unresolved obstacle. Transport Canada has not approved the expansion. Prime Minister Carney called Ford's Billy Bishop plan "an interesting vision" — a formulation notably short of endorsement. Aviation is a federal power. Ontario can seize the land, but it cannot put jets in the air without Ottawa's approval. The runway extension into Lake Ontario also requires approvals under the Canadian Navigable Waters Act and the Impact Assessment Act — neither of which has been initiated.

Bill 110 is not an isolated event. The "deemed assignment" mechanism it uses — legislating one party out of a multi-party agreement and substituting the Crown without consent — has already been deployed at Ontario Place and Exhibition Place. Every municipal asset in Ontario, every intergovernmental agreement the province was never party to, is now vulnerable to the same legislative manoeuvre. Billy Bishop is proof of concept.