BURST
YVR is open to “exploring” the idea of inviting private investment, says airport CEO Tamara Vrooman.
Speaking at his Canada Investment Summit in Toronto on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Ottawa will open its busiest airports to private investment in the form of long-term “concessions.” He expects that to raise “tens of billions of dollars” to invest in improving regional air transportation in Canada, along with other priorities.
Besides Vancouver International Airport, the proposal involves Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport and Calgary International Airport.
The idea is short of full privatization, Carney said. “The government of Canada will retain ownership of the underlying land and assets, but we will unlock their true value by bringing in new capital and expertise into their operations and growth.”
Carney floated the idea of opening airports to private investment almost a year ago in his government’s last budget and, on Tuesday, Vrooman said in a statement that YVR has been “productively engaging” with Ottawa in the months since then.
A decade ago, YVR opposed the last proposal by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to sell off its largest airports in “share-capital structures” over concerns that doing so would lead to higher fees and less local control.
On Tuesday, however, Vrooman said that as Carney’s proposal advances, “we look forward to exploring how private investment can continue to drive passenger experience to support our people and community, and ensure YVR delivers long-term economic value for the region and Canada.”
Vrooman was travelling back from the summit and unavailable for an interview, but in her statement said YVR will “continue to engage” with government on the process, as well as continue discussions with the Musqueam Nation under the facility’s relationship with the nation.
Few details were revealed about what such concession agreements would involve, but the proposal has been raised at the same time that YVR is on track to exceed its 2025 records for passenger counts and cargo volumes, and the facility has set its sights on ambitious growth targets.
As of July, YVR had handled 16.1 million passengers, four per cent above 2025 levels, and cargo volumes of 231,799 tonnes were 13 per cent higher than 2025, according to the airport. In all of 2025, YVR had almost 27 million passengers arrive and depart, and processed 365,000 tonnes of cargo.
And, attuned to YVR’s position as a key air-transportation gateway to the Asia Pacific, earlier this year Vrooman set a goal for the airport to double its cargo volumes over the next five years. In an address to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade in April, Vrooman said YVR has “a generational opportunity when it comes to expanding trade and connectivity to untapped markets.”
Depending on what is included in the long-term concessions, such investments would be the biggest change to the structures of the four airports involved since government handed their management over to local airport authorities in the early 1990s, according to University of B.C. academic Tae Oum.
“I think at the time, (that) served a purpose,” said Oum. “It had a good impact in terms of making airports more flexible to the needs of the users, of business and passengers and so on, but I think the efficiency gain from that is essentially been exhausted by now.”
Oum, a professor emeritus in UBC’s Sauder School of Business, is the founder and president of the Air Transportation Research Society, which has benchmarked airport efficiency since 2000 and has consistently ranked YVR as one of the most efficient in North America.
However, Oum’s assessment is that “leadership in (YVR’s) management has somewhat plateaued and maybe diminished in some way” over the last five to 10 years.
Now, Oum believes YVR would be well-served if Canada followed the example of airports in Europe, Australia and some parts of Asia that have privatized or adopted public-private models of operation.
“Overall, I think it’s time for Canada to inject some private efficiency into airport operations management,” Oum said.
The proposal, however, has also generated opposition. Federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis said such a move would be “disastrous for travellers and workers.”
A decade ago, former YVR CEO Craig Richmond criticized the last proposal, which risked a reduced level of local control, as well as higher fees and fewer services as investors sought to recoup their billions of dollars of investment.
“That money would have to come from somewhere,” he said.