Expecting lags while gaming and high on drugs? Pearson-led agency contemplates bringing cannabis and gaming to airport as it struggles to recoup losses

Flight delays at Toronto’s Pearson Airport, at times this summer the worst in the world, may not be getting better very quickly. But cheer up. Someday, you might be able to wait for them up high while sitting at a slot machine.

If you think traveling to Pearson is a gamble now, in other words, just wait. The agency that manages Canada’s largest and most beleaguered airport has hired a lobbyist to explore the idea of ​​bringing real gambling to a facility where your odds of getting out on time this summer have been about the same as betting black on a wheel. roulette.

Clare Michaels, associate director of Navigator Ltd. and a former senior official in the office of Premier Doug Ford, signed on to lobby on behalf of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) on July 27. Michaels cited a number of goals in her lobbying paperwork, including several tied to bringing more cash to the airport.

For Pearson, that’s no small feat. The GTAA lost more than $700 million during the first two years of the pandemic. In 2020 alone, the agency took out $690 million in short-term loans, and officials have made no secret of the air hub’s dire need to attract more revenue.

(“We’re borrowing to keep the lights on and the lanes open,” board member Michele McKenzie told the Mississauga News last year.)

That fight, for more cash, has already begun. Last year, GTAA increased the fares it charges both passengers and airlines operating from Pearson. (Fees to connect passengers tripled. Airplane landing fees increased three percent.)

But Michaels’ lobbying paperwork suggests that Pearson may now be considering more innovative, or even out-of-the-box, solutions to its fiscal problems.

In his disclosure form, Michaels wrote about a host of possibilities for the airport that are largely tied to the vice industries. She wrote that she plans to talk to the LCBO about expanding booze service at Pearson (the airport in Munich, Germany, for example, has its own independent brewery and beer garden); to provincial regulators on the introduction of cannabis at retail; and to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation on “airport gaming opportunities”. (“Gaming” is an industry synonym for gambling.)

Rachel Bertone, a spokeswoman for the GTAA, said in an email that despite Michaels’ lobbying and stated goals, Pearson is not actively investigating gambling opportunities at the airport nor are there any active plans to open a cannabis store in a city. from the Pearson terminals.

That may well be because the regulatory hurdles to doing either would be high.

It’s relatively easy to open a cannabis store in Ontario and, in theory, nothing prevents an airport from having one. But Ontario municipalities have to opt out of allowing retail cannabis sales, and Mississauga, where the airport is located, has twice voted not to participate.

That does not mean that the vote cannot be annulled. Mississauga will have municipal elections this fall. There are three open seats on the 11-member city council, and Mayor Bonnie Crombie, who supported cannabis shops in 2011, is running for re-election.

Some marijuana industry insiders also believe it’s only a matter of time before an airport opens a cannabis store. Copilot, a company founded by two former roommates at Dartmouth College in the US, plans to open a pot shop at the airport in Prince George, BC, later this year. (The airport did not comment on that plan.)

Meanwhile, industry watchers see nothing inherently wrong with the idea. “Sure why not?” said Michael Armstrong, a business professor at Brock University who studies the cannabis industry. “It’s legal in Canada…they already sell alcohol in duty-free shops. They still serve alcohol in some of the restaurants and bars. … If you want to worry about something, worry about people who consume alcohol.”

Armstrong said the airport would have to be careful to warn passengers not to bring cannabis with them if they’re traveling internationally, lest they break foreign drug laws, but beyond that, it’s more of a market issue than anything else. “I don’t see an airport in particularly high demand,” he said.

However, the barriers to betting at the airport could be more pronounced. Casinos in Ontario are heavily regulated. Private companies hold geographic rights to operate games of chance throughout the province. A Vancouver company, Great Canadian Entertainment, owns those rights to the GTA and already has a huge casino in Woodbine, just down the street from the airport.

Great Canadian declined to comment for this story. But a source in the gaming industry said the company is certain to oppose any development it sees as competing with Woodbine, where a major renovation and expansion is underway.

Airport gambling would also make Pearson a global outlier. Two airports in Nevada have some gaming, and slot machines are available at Heathrow Airport in London, UK, but few other terminals around the world have any form of casino gaming.

All that said, though, the fact remains that the GTAA hired a lobbyist, with close ties to the provincial government, to explore gambling at Pearson. Michaels is one of two Navigator lobbyists now working for the GTAA, according to provincial records. But she is the only one to list airport games on her disclosure form.

Michaels did not respond to an email from Star about this story, nor did the GTAA respond when asked why, if the airport has no plans to open a pot shop or casino in the airport, is it paying Michaels to lobby the provincial government on marijuana. and gambling

“As a private, non-profit, non-equity corporation with revenue closely tied to passenger traffic,” Bertone wrote in his email, “the Greater Toronto Airports Authority continues to seek options to diversify its revenue streams.” .

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