The Canadian experience of privatisation

I am going to talk about the Canadian experience of privatizing airports. This is an endeavour in which I have been intimately involved for the past 5 years* in my capacity as the head of Transport Canada's Airports Group.

Before I talk about airports, it is essential that I explain that our privatization efforts in Canada are an integral part of a fundamental overhaul of the way in which the Canadian federal government will be involved in Canadian transportation.

This overhaul has come about because much of our nation's transportation infrastructure and the methods of developing and delivering transportation services were born of a different time and requirement. In Canada, this has resulted in a system that is either in a state of overcapacity or badly balanced and, as a result, expensive to maintain and inefficient.