Prime Minister Mark Carney announced his government’s intention to privatize Canada’s airports at the Canada Investment Summit convened in Toronto on September 15, 2026. The Summit brought together CEOs and financiers from around the world to raise capital financing for so-called “nation building” major projects across Canada in commodities, trade and digital infrastructure.
Airport privatization was also one of the major announcements made at the Summit, and it appears to have raised the eyebrows of many, including those in the travel industry, among government caucus members, and among Canada’s labour unions. With precise timing, the week before this Investment Summit announcement, the Canadian Labour Congress released a new report entitled: Public Runways, Private Profits: Why Airport Privatization Would be Risky and Costly for Canadians.
The report raises questions about the stated goals of airport privatization: ultimately to lower costs of their operation – and looks to other examples of airport and infrastructure privatization around the world where the opposite has happened – that costs of have increased.
Canada’s labour unions have come out opposed to the transfer of ownership to private equity interests, maintaining that the essential services and infrastructure remain in the hands of public control. However, defenders of this privatization have already pushed back against concern, arguing that Canadian airports aren’t publicly owned anyway. Then why the need to privatize, and who’s airport is it anyway?
To clarify the confusion, DT Cochrane, Senior Economist at the Canadian Labour Congress talks to Clement Nocos for the Perspectives Journal Podcast about the CLC’s new report and what airport privatization means for Canadians.
Notes
Public Runways, Private Profits: Why Airport Privatization Would be Risky and Costly for Canadians, Canadian Labour Congress, September 2026.
‘Canada’s 4 largest airports to be opened up to private investment, Carney says,’ CBC News, September 15, 2026.
Press Release: The first Canada Investment Summit unleashes nearly $500 billion of new investment in Canada, Office of the Prime Minister of Canada, September 15, 2026.
