It’s an issue that the Mayor of Thunder Bay says he’s been working on for six weeks and counting.

Bill Mauro concluded another meeting with the Ontario Big City Mayors Thursday, with a number of topics that were discussed, including changing a provincial regulation for airport revenue.

Thunder Bay is one of only four municipalities that has an airport authority (London, Ottawa & Toronto) which collects funds based on how many passengers pass through the doors to travel.

“Our revenues from the airports, they don’t pay tax they pay a payment in lieu in the form of dollar per passenger,” explained Mauro. “Coming out of COVID-19 (and the pandemic), our passenger numbers will start to increase dramatically, if they haven’t done so already. But the way the regulation is structured, we would only be able to get revenue associated with a 5 per cent passenger increase based on the two year lag number.”

Mauro points to Ontario Regulation 282/98 (Section 45.1) which states that the current dollar figure per passenger is $0.55.