Privatizing Canada’s airports could mean higher costs for travellers and less control over a critical public asset

The federal government wants to attract foreign investment to Canada, and it’s holding an international summit for this purpose. But as media reports have indicated, “foreign investment” may actually include opening up public infrastructure, like our airports, to private investors. And this is something Canadians should oppose, whether it occurs now or later.

This process is an existing scheme called asset recycling. In it, governments lend out—or lease—existing public infrastructure to private investors for money. And that money is used by the government to pay to build new infrastructure. Then the process can start over, supposedly securing an ongoing source of revenue for the government.

Sounds good, right? Unfortunately this process has hidden costs—and ultimately, the public pays.

The heaviest cost is the loss of democratic control. A “lease” can last for 50 to 99 years, and during that time the asset temporarily “belongs” to the private investor and can be managed according to their needs—which frequently means maximizing profits by cutting costs and extracting value from the asset.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s all been done before—and called a public-private partnership (P3). Only, with asset recycling, the private investor gets an even better deal because they don’t have to design or build the airport (or bridge or highway) in the first place!

And as we can see from the track record of P3s, these often fail to deliver the public benefits promised, with private investors instead maximizing their own returns. Think of Toronto’s Highway 407, whose private-consortium management charges drivers the most expensive toll rate in Canada.

The same is true for supposedly “recycled” public assets—assets built publicly then operated privately for a “temporary” period of 50 years or more. And a comparison of how Canada’s public airports operate, compared to “recycled” airports in other countries, like Australia and the U.K., bears this out.

In Canada, most major airports are operated on federal land by not-for-profit corporations called airport authorities. They make money by charging fees, or rent, to the airlines, passengers and airport retailers. But because they are non-profit organizations, they reinvest all of their profits into long-term improvements to airport infrastructure. They also pay the federal government—meaning us—an annual rent for using the land the airports sit on. That rent amounted to $525 million in 2025 alone, an important revenue stream that would most likely be traded away for a one-time upfront payment.

Under a private, for-profit model, private investors would likely seek to maximize those revenue streams, hiking terminal fees to airlines, commercial rents to retail tenants and ancillary fees like parking to passengers. All of this would conspire to raise costs for travellers.

Just look at Australia, where airport investment firms like Macquarie Bank have promised returns of more than 13 per cent. Where does that profit come from? From the three groups that currently pay airport authorities in Canada: airlines, retailers and passengers. Indeed, Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission found that airlines and passengers in that country paid “up to $1.6 billion too much for airport access over the past decade.”

Similar critiques echoed in the U.K., where the newly privatized British Airport Authority was accused of diverting investment away from passenger service and terminal maintenance and toward the development of duty-free stores. The same attitudes can lead to staffing cuts, increasing airport delays.

So, though Canada’s minister of transport has implied that leasing out our airports would make the passenger experience better and lower the cost of flights, Australia and the U.K. suggest the opposite is often true.

Finally, privatization often brings deregulation, increasing tensions between profit-driven investors and the public interest over costs, safety, noise, security and service. Canadians can expect private investors to oppose anything that increases the cost of their operations, even if it runs counter to the public interest.

In the end, privatizing Canada’s airports doesn’t solve any of the problems we face. Instead it risks making air travel even more expensive and less pleasant. And Canadians would be giving up democratic control over a critical public asset for generations.

Simon Enoch is a senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.