Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate having you here. It's late at night.
Mr. Crichton and Mr. Eley, you've had a little bit of a break, so I'm going to ask you a couple of questions.
You know, panel, we really are just trying to get to the “plain” truth here—whichever spelling you decide you want to use.
I live in York Region, and we have a slightly different issue going on in York Region with the Buttonville Airport, which I'm sure you are familiar with. I have lived in York Region long enough to have seen Toronto move north. York Region has expanded, and what was never intended to be an urban airport has suddenly become an urban airport. Of course, I flew out of the Toronto airport when it was still called Malton and there was no Mississauga—it was Port Credit—and Brampton was a long way away.
Many of these urban centres have grown up around these smaller airports, and we really do have quite a conundrum right now in York Region because the Buttonville Airport has been the only accessible airport for emergency landings for York Region. There are quite a number of corporate headquarters that have grown up in the Markham area and into Richmond Hill, so quite a number of those corporate headquarters have maintained corporate airplanes at the Buttonville Airport. Now, for a variety of reasons—and I'm not saying the growth around has been the sole problem—we're losing the Buttonville Airport. It's being sold. It's a private airport and they have the right to do that, but I am absolutely confident that one of the reasons that has come into play here has been the noise that has been a problem in the area.
Nav Canada says they do a consultation process; Transport Canada says they do a consultation process. Can you expand on what the consultation process looks like? Are the municipalities involved with that? When growth is happening in an area, are developers part of that consultation process? And do you consult with each other? Do you combine your reports, or are they two separate areas?
Does growth change the patterns for the routing? I suppose Nav Canada would have to answer that one.