Toronto’s top doctor to study impacts of expanding Billy Bishop airport

As the Ford government pushes forward its plan to expand Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport, the local board of health is considering the impacts a bigger hub could have downtown.

At the board meeting on Monday, experts, residents and others weighed in on the potentially major change, insisting the health effects of an expanded airport need to be studied in depth.

During the meeting, board members heard from people worrying about unprecedented health risks” from the airport and others who raised concerns about ADHD or memory issues.

Dr. Michelle Murti, Toronto’s medical officer of health, is now being tasked with writing a study on the move. Alongside Health Canada, she is being asked to look at the effects of expanding Billy Bishop specifically on lung and heart disease.

“We’re trying to understand to what degree health impact is going to have,” she said on Monday.

The fears from some in the community come as the government pushes to increase the size of Billy Bishop Airport to accommodate larger planes, something it says would be a major economic boost.

During the spring sitting, the Ford government passed a law to take control of the City of Toronto’s role in running the airport and to give itself expropriation powers over large swaths of Toronto Island.

The province also plans to designate the area a special economic zone — something that would allow it to bypass provincial and municipal laws to build the airport expansion faster.

While Ontario did not hold public consultations on the airport, Premier Doug Ford has repeatedly stated that internal polling has shown more than 70 per cent expressed support for the expansion of the airport.

Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria has also defended his plan as an important step in the fight against economic disruption from the United States.

“Leaders across this country are talking about nation-building projects,” he said in June.

“We are putting forward projects like the Billy Bishop airport that are going to transform the way we compete against the world… Billy Bishop will help support that and continue to improve our competitiveness across the world.”

Studies on airports and health in the past have raised some concerns, including one recent one that found that showed ultrafine particulates linked to various diseases are already a problem near the airport.

“When we did our study, we could see a rise of ultrafine particles for each flight when wind was blowing from the airport to the community,” Greg Evans, professor of engineering at the University of Toronto, told Global News.

Downtown councillors also say they are finding themselves under pressure from residents to speak up.

They’re saying, ‘Councillor, stand up and say to the province and the federal government we don’t want this expansion,'” Coun. Chris Moise, chair of the Toronto Board of Health, said.