No airport. Now what for the Pickering lands?

In 1972 the federal government expropriated about 18,600 acres of farmland north of Pickering for a second Toronto airport. Families were moved out. The airport was never built. For fifty years the land sat under a reservation that stopped anyone doing anything permanent with it.

In January 2025 Ottawa ended that: the Pickering Lands will not be an airport, and the highest-value conservation land goes to Parks Canada to expand Rouge National Urban Park. A public consultation on the rest ran from March to April this year. In May, Pickering council endorsed a land-use review recommending that more than 6,500 acres stay in agriculture inside the expanded park, with thirty-year farm leases to encourage real investment, and about a fifth of the land set aside for employment, a figure that drew mixed reviews from farmers and from the people who want more built.

It is the one place in the region where the question is not how to fit more in but what to do with room.

Sources: Transport Canada, the Pickering Lands · Transport Canada, the consultation on future uses · Durham Radio News, no airport on the Pickering Lands · insauga, a fifth for employment draws mixed reviews · Farmtario, a more certain future for the farms