For careful observers, Tuesday’s

federal budget

had some highly interesting things to say about the future role of

Canada’s airports

, which is a welcome development considering their

importance to our economy

, our

trade relationships

and our connectivity to the rest of the world.

For example, funding has been restored to the Airports Capital Assistance Program, which will support important safety-related upgrades at local and regional airports. There are also nods to lease extensions and ground rent formulas, which are important questions for

airports and their many stakeholders

.

The language that will invariably attract the most attention is about the government considering “new ways to attract

private-sector investment

” and “options for the privatization of airports.” I’ll come back to that. But first, let’s unpack the most important item, which is actually the $5 billion earmarked for trade and transportation infrastructure projects, with airports and ports highlighted as “central to diversifying Canada’s trade.”

Recognition of that piece is everything right now, because Canada is in the early days of a fundamental realignment from its old economy and airports are square in the middle of it all. New tariffs are being priced in and new trade corridors and alliances are being forged. Digital technologies are disrupting lives and businesses.

Canada’s airports, which already generate more than $120 billion in annual economic output and support nearly 436,000 jobs, are going to be key enablers of this change. If you are exploring new markets or revamping your supply chains, you will often be flying or connecting as a passenger through Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal. If you’re shipping or engaging in e-commerce, your goods will likely land on the same runways in the belly of a plane.

Canada’s big hubs have already been working to accommodate such changes. It’s not that airport planners saw Donald Trump and the tariff wars coming — it’s that their job is to watch the long-term trends in demographics, population and GDP growth, international destinations and connections data, remote work and labour markets.

This careful forecasting informs the infrastructure choices Canada’s hub airports have been making. The pandemic accelerated changes in where people go and why — fewer short hops, more experiential travel and international leisure trips. Labour shortages and supply-chain issues have nudged airlines toward using fewer, larger planes, which has put new demands on arrival halls, gates, runways, digital infrastructure and transit connections. Terminal spaces and cargo facilities need to be right-sized and hyper-efficient.

To accommodate these new realities and drive more passenger and

economic growth

, two of those three big hubs —Toronto Pearson and Montreal-Trudeau — have recently launched multi-year building programs. They weren’t waiting on this year’s budget to start financing their work, but it does reflect the changing world they’ve been planning for.

And as for financing, that brings us back to privatization and private-sector investment, which some are already interpreting as a door being opened to

airport ownership by pension funds

or other equity partners. The entire industry will want to learn more about what the government intends.

It’s easy to see why pension funds would want to own large airports and ports — they are valuable assets that return money to Ottawa, exactly as intended. And the pensions have been speaking very clearly in

recent days

about how much they’d like to acquire these assets.

These investors have plenty of capital, but Canada’s airport authorities are already private, non-shareholding corporations, run with a business mentality. They have few issues raising capital for infrastructure programs. And as owners, pensions tend to work against affordability for passengers by driving up fees to generate profits and dividends.

That’s why the best role for institutional investors isn’t as majority equity owners, but as financing partners — another investment option for airports, which will have plenty of infrastructure projects to build as they pivot toward new markets and economic realities. With newly extended airport leases providing certainty for airport partners and plenty of shovel-ready capital projects in the works, from aerospace development to energy plants, there will be more opportunity for institutional investment than we have seen in decades.

That’s the kind of investment and partnership we need right now, the kind that forges new trade connections, drives new growth and makes our country more competitive at a time when it will be sorely needed. Airports are at the heart of Canada’s growth and trade diversification story — even if we don’t know everything about the government’s intentions, we should be happy to see that fact recognized in the budget.

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Monette Pasher is president of the Canadian Airports Council