Few public agencies are more consistent than the Toronto Port Authority. Year in and year out, it manages to lose a barge-load of money while performing relatively minor tasks around the harbour. There is usually some turnaround plan in the works. Millions are spent, followed by failure and excuses from high-paid port authority officials.
Last year was no different, with the authority's money-leaking operations losing a record $6 million. To put the magnitude of that shortfall in perspective, the agency's revenues, from all its activities, amounted to less than $10 million.
The port authority, incorporated in 1999, has had ample time to show it can become an efficient operation that, while not necessarily making money, at least doesn't continue to lose a bundle year after year.
In light of that record, this ineffectual, unaccountable, unelected and unnecessary agency deserves a speedy scuttling.
An ideal chance to disband the port authority was wasted last fall when a federal fact-finder, appointed to review the port authority's earlier decisions, produced a tepid report that failed to capture this agency's pointlessness. Roger Tassé's main criticism focused on the port authority's poor relations with the city, especially community groups opposed to airline flights from Toronto Island Airport.
The port authority has responded to that finding by spending already-limited dollars on a self-serving telephone poll of 503 Toronto residents. Most respondents agreed the port authority provides economic benefits. But, one wonders, how many were informed of this agency's history of multi-million-dollar shortfalls?
Toronto is a relatively minor commercial port and does not require a federal agency to provide simple services such as dredging, unloading occasional cargo, operating a marina and running a sleepy island airport. Toronto's port operation is so small it routinely moves less tonnage than Goderich on Lake Huron, which has a population of 7,600.
Yet the port authority has always had big dreams. From a proposed island airport bridge, which was never built, to construction of a terminal for the doomed Toronto-to-Rochester ferry, this agency's plans have repeatedly failed. The current hope for a turnaround rests on the future of Porter Airlines, which has been flying from the island airport to Ottawa and Montreal since late last year.
Despite the airline industry's uncertain record of success, especially when running flights from Toronto island, port authority officials were optimistic at their annual meeting last week. While reporting its huge operating loss, they added, "we expect the airport's revenue to increase dramatically." That's wishful thinking.
This agency has had enough chances to make good. It should be disbanded and its duties divided between the federal level and a municipal panel that includes elected city officials. That would be the best way to serve Toronto and its harbour.
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