SPECIAL REPORT: Carney privatizes Montreal-Trudeau, MacKinnon won’t guarantee the ticket price

Two airports, ten days apart

Toronto, September 15

In Toronto, on September 15, in front of executives and investors, an airport became a series of restaurants and shops.

The phrase was Mark Carney’s, Le Devoir reports. The prime minister was explaining where private capital would find its return.

In Dorval, the Montreal suburb where the airport sits, ten days later, travellers were lining up for several hundred metres just to reach the drop-off lanes, La Presse writes.

A suitcase catching on the curb. A taxi engine idling for nothing. An eye on the departure time.

Dorval, September 25

Two airports. The same one, in fact.

The one pitched to investors. The one travellers walk through.

Between the two, a pier with 12 gates. It exists on a plan. Nowhere else.

And a ticket price that nobody in Ottawa will agree to guarantee.

One airport for investors, another for travellers.

Four airports leased out for decades

Ottawa keeps the land

The Prime Minister’s Office release gives the airports only a few lines.

The federal government will seek private investment, through long-term concessions, to operate the country’s four largest airports. Toronto-Pearson. Montreal-Trudeau. Calgary. Vancouver.

Ottawa keeps the land. Ottawa keeps the assets. Ottawa keeps the safety and service standards, according to Le Devoir. It hands over the operations.

The contract would run 35 or 50 years, the same paper reports.

Thirty-five years. Or fifty.

The money goes elsewhere

The release also says where the money will go.

To regional airports. To local transit. To national connectivity, including a sovereign broadband network.

The summit claims nearly C$500 billion in new investment commitments, according to the same release. The airports fill only a few lines of it.

The capital could come from abroad, Mark Carney acknowledged. He gave no timeline.

The new federal fund for a strong Canada would act as co-investor. The November 2025 budget had already floated various scenarios for privatizing airports, Le Devoir recalls.

Montreal’s airport would pay for projects elsewhere.

Unifor, the Bloc and a balanced budget

Voices against

September 15 was a Tuesday.

That day, ADM, Aéroports de Montréal, the airport’s operator, called it a unique opportunity, according to Radio-Canada. The Caisse, Quebec’s pension fund manager, said it was open. The union Unifor protested under a simple slogan: airports are not for sale.

The New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois said they feared higher fees and higher ticket prices, Radio-Canada and Le Devoir report. The Conservative leader called the summit a grand illusion.

Each party its own reading. Each its own voters.

A balanced budget, a year early

The same day, Mark Carney also announced that the operating budget would be balanced as of next year, a year ahead of schedule, according to Le Devoir.

Two announcements. The same Tuesday.

The prime minister did not link them. The reader has both on the page.

This report takes no party’s side. It takes the side of one number: C$40 per ticket, already.

Two announcements in one day, and one number that counts.

A C$10 billion plan slows down

Ten billion by 2035

On September 25, at 5 a.m., La Presse published the next chapter.

Aéroports de Montréal, or ADM, wants to transform Montreal-Trudeau by 2035. A plan priced at C$10 billion.

Work to unclog access to the drop-off lanes continues. The REM light-rail station is still due to open in 2027. Baggage capacity is going up.

The doubt hangs over the 2035 horizon.

Beyond 2028

ADM says so in a written statement to the paper. It will have to talk quickly with the Government of Canada before committing to the next stage beyond 2028.

The airside satellite pier is supposed to add 12 gates. An 80,000-square-metre building. Four storeys. A tunnel to the terminal.

The first phase, 4 gates starting in 2028, is under way. Barricades already mark out the site. The rest is still being planned, ADM says.

Heavy machinery can be seen nearby, La Presse writes. No excavation yet.

Four gates under construction. Eight on hold.

I stand with the travellers of Montreal-Trudeau. Against the decision Mark Carney announced on September 15, as it is written. Because five days later, his transport minister refused to guarantee that their prices won’t rise.

The minister promises affordability, not prices.

Four gates under way, eight gates in limbo.

The price nobody will guarantee

September 20, on air

On September 20, Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon was asked about prices, CP24 reports.

Could he guarantee that fares won’t go up?

No.

He promised solid agreements. He promised details in the weeks and months ahead. Fares and fees, he said, would be “partially regulated.” Only justified increases, he vowed.

He did not promise the price.

Partially

Partially regulated means partially free.

On September 15, the same minister told La Presse that affordability was at the top of the government’s priorities.

Five days separate the two sentences.

The minister says he wants to invest in the “passenger experience” and in regional connectivity, according to CP24. Yet a passenger’s experience begins with the price of the ticket.

Fares. Fees. Charges. Everything stays open.

A priority. Not a guarantee.

Affordability is a priority. The price is not a promise.

C$40 on every ticket

The highest fees in the country

You have to know where you’re starting from.

Forty dollars. Per ticket. On departure.

Every ticket out of Montreal-Trudeau already carries an airport improvement fee of C$40. The highest in the country, La Presse writes.

ADM is a non-profit. It cannot raise share capital. To pay for its projects, it has to borrow or raise its fees and charges.

And those fees, the paper notes, usually end up in the ticket price.

The debt that keeps climbing

At the end of 2025, ADM had about C$520 million in cash, according to its annual report as cited by La Presse. Its debt is close to C$2.7 billion.

According to DBRS Morningstar, in August, that debt was set to climb to about C$6 billion around 2030. Not counting a C$1 billion loan from the Canada Infrastructure Bank, granted in July 2025.

The rating agency judges that ADM’s room to take on more debt has shrunk considerably. Its rating remains A (high).

The traveller pays the fees. The traveller pays the debt. The traveller pays for the construction.

Tomorrow, the traveller would pay the return as well.

The traveller already pays, forty dollars at a time.

Little or no correlation, says the minister

The minister’s argument

The government has an answer. It deserves its strongest form.

On September 15, Steven MacKinnon told La Presse that his government had done the analysis around the world. By his account, it found little or no correlation between the public-private model and air travel fees, such as improvement fees.

A regulator, he added, would let Ottawa keep oversight of those fees. Investors would not have a free hand.

Canada, he says, is only following established practice in Europe and Australia. About 20% of the world’s airports are already privatized, according to Canadian Labour Congress data cited by Radio-Canada.

Five days later

And yet on September 20, the same minister refused to guarantee prices.

If the analysis showed no link between privatization and fees, a guarantee would cost nothing. It should have been easy to give.

It was not given.

The minister put no figures on his international comparison in the remarks La Presse reported. Not one country named. Not one fee cited.

Oversight is not a ceiling. A regulator that watches is not a regulator that sets.

An analysis that reassures should be something you can sign.

The 1992 lease model

A lease that runs to 2072

ADM runs Montreal-Trudeau and Mirabel under a lease signed with Transport Canada in 1992. It runs until 2072, Radio-Canada notes.

A non-profit. No shareholders. Financed mainly by borrowing on the markets, La Presse specifies.

Thirty-four years of lease behind it. Forty-six ahead.

The idea of selling it isn’t new. A report submitted in February 2016 by former minister David Emerson put it on the table. The Trudeau government set it aside, La Presse recalls.

A model that already costs

Now the fact that embarrasses defenders of the status quo. I’ll own it plainly.

This public model is non-profit. It produced the highest improvement fees in Canada. It produced a debt headed for C$6 billion. It produced lines several hundred metres long at the drop-off lanes.

And ADM itself welcomed the September 15 announcement as a unique opportunity, according to Radio-Canada.

That’s true. And yet it doesn’t change this: a body with no shareholders that charges too much can be corrected by Ottawa. A concession holder bound by a 35- or 50-year contract, far less so.

The old model is expensive. The new one has no price yet.

Ottawa’s C$525 million rent

Five hundred twenty-five million a year

While everyone watched the line at the drop-off lanes, another number slipped by almost unnoticed.

Ottawa already collects about C$525 million a year in rent from airport authorities, Radio-Canada reports.

That rent is paid by the airports. And airports finance themselves through travellers.

A rent every year. An advance once. The same pocket.

Nobody has yet said what the advance would be worth. Several billion, that’s all.

I’ll admit a simple fear. Paying twice for the same airport: once in rent, once in an advance.

If the advance runs into the billions, and if the buyer wants a return…

Cashing in up front

With the concession, Ottawa aims to raise several billion dollars, La Presse writes.

Ottawa no longer wants only annual rent. It wants a lump sum up front, to spend on other projects.

A buyer who pays billions up front will want them back over 35 or 50 years. Everything suggests the buyer would recover them from the people passing through the airport. In fees. In commercial rents. In parking.

The Montreal traveller would thus pre-finance a sovereign broadband network and regional airports.

The rent becomes an advance. The traveller stays the same.

The buyer’s return

Money that doesn’t exist yet

Jacques Roy, professor emeritus at HEC Montréal and author of a book on Montreal-Trudeau and Mirabel, puts it bluntly to La Presse.

When private capital arrives, it will demand a return. That money does not exist at the moment, he says.

In ADM’s shoes, he adds, he wouldn’t be in a hurry to pursue a C$10 billion plan. A new operator is likely to want to go over everything with a fine-tooth comb.

Reviewing the projects one by one is its right. It is also a delay.

What Montreal-Trudeau is worth

In 2025, ADM posted C$160 million in net profit. The airport handled 22.3 million passengers, a slight dip from 2024, according to La Presse.

Thirty-five carriers. About 160 destinations. Seven hundred twenty-five employees. Five all-cargo carriers at Mirabel.

A profitable asset. An interested buyer. A seller in a hurry.

In 2017, before the pandemic, the C.D. Howe Institute valued ADM at C$3 billion.

Private operators, Carney explained on September 15, will look for returns and efficiency in the restaurants and shops, according to Le Devoir.

Maybe. But terminal shops also live off travellers. The sandwich, the bottle of water, the parking: it’s still the same wallet.

A return is built on three levers. Traffic. Shops. Fees.

The easiest one to pull is the ticket.

A return always gets paid somewhere.

Twelve gates in limbo

The value of a project skipped

This is where the calendar becomes a matter of money.

A concession holder will pay for the airport based on what it expects to earn, minus what it will have to build. Any project it is not obliged to carry out would weigh in its bid.

Every phase frozen would improve the price for Ottawa. Every phase frozen would delay gates for travellers. Every phase frozen would lengthen the line.

That is a deduction. The contract will bear it out, or not.

Travellers’ time

ADM isn’t saying it is freezing anything. It says it has to talk quickly. It says the rest of the pier is still being planned.

The sale timeline, for its part, does not exist.

How long can a gate wait for a buyer?

But for anyone who flies, the result is measured in gates.

Four gates in 2028. The other eight wait for a buyer who doesn’t exist yet, a contract that isn’t written, a timeline nobody has given.

A missing gate means planes waiting away from the terminal. Passengers bused across the tarmac. Missed connections.

The line at the drop-off lanes, meanwhile, waits for no one.

Ottawa gains by waiting. The traveller loses by waiting.

The Caisse at the table

Ready to look

On September 15, the Caisse said it was entirely open to examining these assets, Radio-Canada reports. It has invested in airports abroad for more than 20 years, including Heathrow, in London.

Mark Carney said it himself, according to Le Devoir. Large Canadian pension plans, such as the Caisse or PSP Investments, already manage big airports. Abroad only.

There will be competition among investors, he promised.

And yet this Canadian expertise is exercised, by Carney’s own account, only abroad. It would be cutting its teeth here, on a 35- or 50-year contract.

The Quebecer who pays and collects

Here is the Quebec paradox.

The Caisse manages Quebecers’ savings, La Presse notes. Heathrow, London. Not yet Dorval.

If the Caisse buys, Quebecers’ savings would collect the return. Montreal-Trudeau travellers, often the same Quebecers, would pay the fees.

The same citizen. The retiree who collects. The traveller who pays.

And if it isn’t the Caisse, the money could come from abroad. The return would then leave with it.

The retiree would gain what the traveller would pay.

A fee cap, twelve gates, a date

Nothing is signed

Nothing is signed. It is the only good news in this file.

The opposition parties each have their reading. This report takes none of them. It takes the ticket’s.

A 35- or 50-year contract can still carry what is missing. A contract can set a numeric cap on improvement fees, indexed and public. A contract can require all twelve gates, with dates. A contract can impose penalties if the gates don’t arrive. It can force every fee increase to be published. It can say who pays when traffic falls.

None of that is in the September 15 release.

A cap. Gates. A date. Three lines of contract.

Travellers won’t sign this contract. They will pay for every line of it.

Who, at the table, will speak for them?

A signature, not an interview

The minister says the details will come in the weeks and months ahead.

Then let him write them where they bind. In the contract. Not in an interview.

Affordability at the top of the priorities is a sentence. A fee cap in a concession is a guarantee.

A guarantee gets signed, or it doesn’t exist.

A ticket with no guarantor

Three dates, no price

On September 15, Mark Carney announced the concession. On the 20th, Steven MacKinnon refused to guarantee prices. On the 25th, ADM said it had to talk before going beyond 2028.

Three dates. One decision. No price.

Ottawa would cash in. The buyer would turn a profit. The traveller would pay.

In that order, unless something changes in the contract.

Pay here, spend elsewhere

Who, in the concession contract, will sign the line that protects the price of the ticket?

Four gates will be ready in 2028. For the other eight, travellers will have to wait until Ottawa sells.

The line at the drop-off lanes is already moving more slowly than the file.

Montreal-Trudeau is sold off. The ticket price is left an orphan.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Prime Minister’s Office — concessions for the four largest airports, September 15, 2026
• LaPresse.ca — ADM’s statement and Montreal-Trudeau’s C$10 billion plan, September 25, 2026
• CP24 — Minister MacKinnon won’t guarantee prices, September 20, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Radio-Canada — federal rents, ADM’s lease and the Caisse’s reaction, September 15, 2026
• LaPresse.ca — the minister’s argument on air travel fees, September 15, 2026
• LeDevoir.com — concessions of 35 or 50 years, September 15, 2026