When the board of Waterfront Toronto endorsed a city report that recommends against approving the expansion of Billy Bishop Airport until 2015, it introduced a note of sanity into the madness now unfolding at the foot of Bathurst St.

Though Porter Airlines founder Robert Deluce would have us believe that his delusions of jet-fuelled grandeur are compatible with waterfront revitalization, they are anything but.

Indeed, his arguments, which are full of half-truths and unquestioned assumptions, are transparently self-serving and wholly inconsistent with the interests of Toronto.

Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly may support expansion , but he will live to regret that. In truth, Deluce’s intentions would spell disaster, not just for the waterfront, but the larger city.

To begin with, allowing jets to operate at the Island Airport would be incredibly dangerous; there simply isn’t enough space for jets to take off and land safely and besides, there’s a bird sanctuary just east. Anyone who remembers the Miracle on the Hudson in 2009 knows the impact a bird strike can have.

Worse still, Billy Bishop, unlike other airports, doesn’t have a usable north/south runway. The main east/west landing strip works under most, but not all, conditions. Lengthening the north/south runway to accommodate headwinds would mean taking over parkland.

Even if Deluce’s revamped airport meets minimal safety requirements, the margin of error is disturbingly small. Billy Bishop’s main runway is less than 4,000 feet (1,200 metres), maybe 5,200 after expansion. The CSeries jetliners need a minimum of 4,000 feet to take off and 4,400 to land. However, at their maximum weight, they need 4,800 to take off, and 4,400 to land.

Interestingly, the jet’s manufacturer, Bombardier, operates a 7,000-foot runway at Downsview. And if a crash were to occur at Billy Bishop, could the airport respond quickly and effectively?

But for Kelly, blithely unconcerned about safety, the issue is economic; he sees the Island Airport as a financial asset whose value we have yet to fully exploit. Deluce likes to say that the economic impact of his airline is $1.5 billion annually. That number, highly suspect, pales in comparison to many billions a revitalized waterfront will add to the city.

In other words, Kelly’s argument is a good reason for not expanding Billy Bishop. But Deluce has never relied on rational thought to make his case. While the Waterfront Toronto board was meeting Monday afternoon, he was busy lobbying the deputy mayor in his city hall office.

“How did we get in this position?” asked former Toronto chief planner and WT director Gary Wright at the same meeting. “Some things just intuitively don’t make sense. Are there better things to spend scarce public money on than Billy Bishop?”

Another WT director, former city councillor Joe Pantalone, said approving Deluce’s request would be like “jumping off a cliff.” Such a decision, he insisted, “would be foolhardy.”

Ross McGregor, also a director, was “tempted to reject outright the proposed expansion.”

But the loudest applause went to board member and Ryerson University president Sheldon Levy. “I’d like to hear from the children,” he said in reference to pupils at The Waterfront School , located a stone’s throw from the airport. “They should be part of this.”

Already those kids are breathing some of the most polluted air in the city and dodging traffic to get to and from classes. Some Deluce supporters have even suggested the school be torn down to make way for airport parking.

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If ever there was a case of putting planes before people, this is it. To accede to Deluce and his monomaniacal demands would cost the city billions. It’s simply not worth the price.