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Prime Minister Mark Carney kicked off the Canada Investment Summit‘s Tuesday program by announcing that Ottawa will seek private investment to operate the country’s four biggest airports and use the capital raised — expected to be in the “tens of billions of dollars” — to reinvest in other priorities.

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“Following best practice in other countries, 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 said in his opening remarks.

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The four largest airports are Toronto Pearson, Vancouver International, Montreal Pierre Elliott Trudeau International and Calgary International.

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“Canadian pension funds already invest successfully in many airports around the world,” Carney told the 250 invited guests from more than 25 nations at the inaugural summit for global investors. “It is time to bring that same expertise home to more directly benefit all Canadians.”

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At a news conference following his remarks, Carney said the government would continue to own a piece of the airport “concession” in which private capital invests, through the Canada Strong fund, a sovereign wealth fund announced last spring. Concession arrangements are typically operating contacts that last for a decade or more.

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Since the 1990s, not-for-profit airport authorities have operated Canada’s largest airports, which are part of the National Airports System. But many airports around the world have opened themselves to private capital and Canada’s large pension plans have been voracious investors.

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Over the years, they have taken ownership stakes in airports including London’s Heathrow and Sydney Airport in Australia. The Public Sector Pension Investment Board still owns and operates international airports globally through its wholly-owned subsidiary AviAlliance.

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Carney said there will be consultations “in the coming weeks” about the government’s plan to bring private capital into the big-city airports, but he did not lay out a timeline or say whether legislative changes would be necessary to move to an airport concession model.

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He listed a number of uses for the billions in proceeds, including improvement to regional air services as well as investment in commuter transportation systems across the country and in national broadband, including in the Arctic.

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The previous Liberal government began looking at ways to open the door to pension fund investment in airports — an asset class coveted by exactly the type of deep-pocketed long-term global investors the summit attracted — but Carney used the strongest wording in his first budget in November, saying the government would “consider options for the privatization of airports.”

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Then, when the $25-billion Canada Growth fund was announced in the spring economic update, the government said it was looking into “alternative models of ownership,” and official hinted that airports could be among government-owned assets sold to private funds, with the proceeds used to pay for priority nation-building projects identified by the government — a concept known as asset recycling and popularized in Australia.