Airports officials continue to push Queen’s Park for funding
By Matt Prokopchuk, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Source: TBnewswatch.com
A dedicated provincial fund for airport improvements would make a big difference for sites too small to access federal dollars.
That’s according to Shari Gentes, the Northwest’s regional director of the Airport Management Council of Ontario. The organization has, for over a year, been pressing the Ontario government for a capital fund to help with things like purchasing equipment — similar to the federal airports capital assistance program, but without the same passenger volume requirements airports must satisfy to access it.
Gentes said applying to the federal fund simply is not an option for many small, municipally-owned airports — in northern and southern Ontario.
“With Air Canada, WestJet and Porter pulling out of smaller ports, a lot of people pulling out of regional service, just due to pilot shortages, crew shortages, aircraft shortages and everybody’s moving to bigger aircraft,” she said.
Gentes, who is also the CEO and accountable executive of the Kenora Airport, said to qualify for federal capital funding, an airport has to see at least 1,000 passengers per year on scheduled service.
Kenora’s airport has gone about a year and a half without year-round passenger service — and, consequently, has been shut out of the federal capital program — but recently announced a partnership with North Star Air to restart Kenora-to-Thunder Bay routes in January.
Still, local officials told Newswatch passenger volumes have to be maintained over a three-year period before they can access that federal funding stream again.
That’s why Gentes and the airports council (also known as AMCO) say they want to see Ontario follow the lead of other provinces by introducing a supplementary program.
“It was actually a few ministers who approached us in terms of designing a program that, maybe we could replicate what’s going on in Alberta and Saskatchewan,” she said. “B.C. has a very good program, the Atlantic provinces also get funding for smaller airports, so they’re all capital programs.”
Gentes said the council is proposing a $10 million fund, which “is not a huge ask, but would help a lot of smaller airports.”
She said advocates will again take part in the province’s 2026 pre-budget consultations to make their case.
The AMCO website particularly points to initiatives in place in Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C. “as these provinces demonstrate that such capital assistance can be fiscally responsible and permanent.”
It proposes that, in Ontario, the $10 million fund be sourced from the aviation fuel tax and administered by the Ministry of Transportation.
The council is also calling on the federal government to permanently increase funding for the airports capital assistance program.
Gentes said AMCO is “just trying to get the message out there.”
