The Building Billy Bishop Airport Act, 2026 lets the provincial Minister of Transportation designate specific City of Toronto lands (listed by Property Identification Number) to vest in the Crown, together with associated buildings, fixtures and improvements. The Act replaces the City with the Crown under the Tripartite Agreement governing the airport and restricts the City’s ability to deal with the listed lands or its rights under that agreement.
Compensation to the City is tied to market value determined by appraisal reports prepared under rules set in regulation, with disputes sent to binding arbitration. The Act also limits legal remedies against the Crown for actions taken under the Act, provides powers to adopt standards by reference, allows retroactive regulations in specific circumstances and comes into force on Royal Assent.
At a Glance
What It Does
The Act permits the Minister to prescribe specific City-owned airport parcels to vest in the Crown on a prescribed date; when vesting occurs, related interests, buildings, fixtures and improvements controlled by the City also transfer. It substitutes the Crown for the City in the 1983 Tripartite Agreement and sets a market-value compensation framework using appraisal reports and binding arbitration for disputes.
Who It Affects
Directly affects the City of Toronto (owner/controller of the listed parcels), parties to the Tripartite Agreement (Government of Canada and the Toronto Port Authority), airport tenants and operators, and the provincial Crown as the new owner and regulator of the vested property.
Why It Matters
The Act changes who controls key airport lands and who negotiates airport governance, while circumscribing judicial remedies and empowering broad regulation-making including adoption by reference and retroactive rules—shifts that have operational, fiscal and legal consequences for municipal stakeholders and third-party rights-holders.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The Act creates a mechanism by which the provincial Minister of Transportation can designate, by regulation, specific parcels identified in Schedule 1 (and any additional PINs added by regulation) to be transferred into Crown control on a date set in that prescription. The statutory vesting is not limited to bare land: it extends to interests, buildings, structures, fixtures and improvements, but only if those items are owned or controlled by the City on the date the prescription takes effect.
The Schedule and any PINs in regulation are fixed to the description in force when they are added; later changes to a PIN do not alter what was prescribed.
Compensation is governed by section 4 and by detailed regulatory rules. The Minister (or a named entity in regulation) must produce appraisal reports for each prescribed parcel; those reports must list comparable sales where relevant, explain any deductions (for recoverable costs, for example) and follow valuation dates and methods established in the regulations.
Importantly, the Act narrows market value by excluding special-use value and uplift tied to imminent development; the Crown may instead offer land in exchange as part of compensation. If the City disputes the valuation or other compensation matters, the disagreement goes to binding arbitration under the Arbitration Act, 1991.Operationally, the Act freezes City transactions and rights connected to the prescribed lands and to its interests under the Tripartite Agreement: post‑first‑reading dealings are treated as void and the City must notify the Minister of pending dealings when the Act comes into force.
The statute also curtails third-party remedies: it extinguishes a wide range of causes of action against the Crown and provincial officials for acts under the Act, while explicitly preserving judicial review and constitutional claims. Finally, the Act grants both the Minister and the Lieutenant Governor in Council broad regulation-making authority—allowing the government to define exceptions, set compensation formulas and amounts, prescribe administrative and service rules, adopt external documents by reference (including rolling incorporation of updates), and even make regulations effective retroactively in specified circumstances.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Schedule 1 initially lists eight Property Identification Numbers; the Minister may add more parcels by regulation but each PIN is fixed to its description on the day it’s added.
Only interests, buildings, fixtures and improvements that the City actually owns or controls on the prescription date vest in the Crown.
Appraisal reports supporting compensation must follow regulatory rules and exclude 'special use' value and value from imminent development when calculating market value.
Any dispute about compensation is resolved by binding arbitration under the Arbitration Act, 1991; ordinary court claims for money or injunctions tied to the vesting are broadly barred.
The Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations that cap or fix compensation amounts, require specific payment mechanisms, and otherwise shape how compensation and vesting are implemented.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Definitions and how Schedule PINs work
Section 1 sets key definitions (Crown, Minister, land, Tripartite Agreement, vested real property) and contains a non-obvious technical rule: a Property Identification Number (PIN) in Schedule 1 or in a regulation is interpreted as the land described by that PIN on the date it was added, so later administrative renumbering of PINs does not change what parcel was prescribed. That clause limits title uncertainty that could otherwise follow from municipal land registry changes.
Minister prescribes lands; what vests and when
Section 2 authorizes the Minister to prescribe particular land to vest in the Crown on a prescribed date. The vesting is comprehensive: interests, buildings, structures, fixtures, additions and improvements controlled by the City on that date are brought under Ministerial control. The provision expressly applies despite other agreements or statutes (except for regulations under this Act) and allows the regulations to tailor exceptions or limits on the extent or duration of vesting.
City dealing freeze and notification duty
Section 3 imposes a broad prohibition on the City of Toronto from encumbering, selling, removing or otherwise disposing of the listed parcels or associated assets, and renders any such transactions void. It goes further by deeming post-first-reading dealings void and makes the City responsible for notifying the Minister immediately after the Act comes into force about any pending dealings or litigation affecting the listed lands. The section is subject to regulatory exceptions, giving the government a pathway to permit limited transactions if needed.
Market-value compensation, appraisal regime and arbitration
Section 4 requires the Crown to compensate the City based on market value, as established by appraisal reports prepared under rules in regulation. The section lets the Crown deduct recoverable costs from compensation and permits land exchanges as part of payment. It defines market value narrowly—excluding special-use value and development-driven uplift—and mandates separate appraisal reports for each regulation that prescribes land. Disputes over compensation are directed to binding arbitration under provincial arbitration law.
Substituting the Crown into the Tripartite Agreement
Section 5 deems the City to have assigned its rights and obligations under the 1983 Tripartite Agreement to the Crown on and after the prescribed date and treats future City attempts to alter those rights as void. The provision allows regulations to carve out exceptions or conditions. Practically, this swaps the provincial Crown for the City in the governance structure tied to the airport, changing who negotiates and enforces the agreement’s terms.
Broad bar on causes of action, with narrow carve-outs
Section 8 extinguishes virtually all causes of action against the Crown and its officials arising from the Act’s enactment, regulations, or actions taken under it, and prevents related proceedings—while explicitly preserving rights to judicial review and constitutional remedies. The bar extends to common-law and equitable remedies, including injunctions and specific performance, limiting private enforcement paths and concentrating dispute resolution into the compensation/arbitration framework.
Extensive regulation-making and adoption by reference
Sections 9–11 grant the Minister and the Lieutenant Governor in Council broad powers to prescribe land, define exceptions, set valuation rules, require City actions, govern recoverable costs, and even adopt external documents by reference (with rolling incorporation). The LGIC can directly regulate how agreements that interfere with vesting are treated and may fix maximum or minimum compensation amounts—tools that allow significant policy choices to be made by regulation rather than statute.
Retroactive regulations and commencement
Section 12 permits regulations to have retrospective effect where they explicitly provide for it, potentially applying to rights and interests that existed before the regulation was filed. Section 13 makes the Act commence on Royal Assent; combined with the retroactivity power, that raises practical questions about the temporal reach of regulatory decisions tied to the Act.
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Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Province of Ontario / Crown — Gains immediate statutory control over specified airport lands and the ability to drive modernization, planning and negotiations under the Tripartite Agreement without needing City approval.
- Airlines and passengers — If modernization or capacity projects proceed, carriers and travelers stand to benefit from increased service options and improved airport facilities enabled by provincial control.
- Tourism and hospitality sector — Faster or larger-scale airport upgrades could expand visitor capacity and connectivity, supporting provincial tourism objectives tied to the Act.
Who Bears the Cost
- City of Toronto — Loses control over the prescribed lands and associated assets, must comply with information requests, faces limits on legal remedies and may receive compensation that excludes certain value components the City might otherwise claim.
- Ontario taxpayers — The Crown is required to pay market-value compensation (or convey land) and may face costs from appraisals, arbitration and any political or capital expenses tied to redevelopment or operation.
- Tenants, contractors and third-party rights-holders at the airport — Existing contractual arrangements and licences may be disrupted, and these parties face uncertainty because private remedies (injunctions, specific performance) are largely barred by the Act.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between the province’s objective to take decisive control of strategically important airport lands to enable modernization and economic goals, and the protection of municipal property rights, contractual third‑party expectations and procedural transparency; the Act tries to reconcile these by promising market-value compensation and arbitration while simultaneously limiting judicial remedies and granting extensive regulatory powers—an outcome that secures rapid provincial action but leaves significant questions about fairness, valuation and federal–municipal legal boundaries.
The Act mixes broad expropriation-style powers with a statutory denial that the measures constitute expropriation or injurious affection. That statutory framing narrows ordinary legal remedies while offering market-value compensation under a tightly framed valuation regime that expressly excludes special-use and development-driven uplift.
Practically, that means the City’s recovery is limited to a base-market valuation even if provincial plans materially change the highest and best use of the land. Whether arbitration will adequately compensate for loss of municipal control or transactional value is an open question.
Regulation-making authority is unusually extensive: the Minister and the Lieutenant Governor in Council can set valuation techniques, fix compensation maxima or minima, require City participation in payment methods, adopt external standards by reference (with rolling incorporation), and create retroactive rules. That concentration of power in regulation raises administrative and legal risks—it can speed implementation but also channels major policy choices away from the legislative process and increases the stakes of challenges over procedural fairness, statutory interpretation, or federal jurisdiction where airport governance overlaps federal powers.
Finally, the Act’s bar on causes of action, while preserving judicial review and constitutional claims, significantly reshapes litigation strategy for affected parties. Claimants will likely have to thread narrow paths—arbitration for compensation disputes or constitutional litigation for rights claims—while other remedies are unavailable.
That constraint reduces some legal uncertainty but also concentrates dispute resolution in forums and statutory standards that may not capture all interests harmed by the vesting and substitution of parties under the Tripartite Agreement.
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