Since it isn't available online, see if you can track down a story from the Saturday edition of the Telegram debunking the anti-confederate myth that claims Newfoundland and Labrador has lost billions in fees for use of the airspace over the province since 1949.
This is one of those fantasies claimed by anti-confederates like retired lawyer Jim Halley and others. The most recent version of the fable appeared in The Independent during its multi-part cost/benefit analysis of Confederation.
According to the Telegram, a provincial government assessment prepared for the Premier notes that until relatively recently, regulation of airspace was a money-loser for the federal government. Even today, the fess collected by aircraft traveling through Canadian airspace are used to support things like air navigation. Gee, what a big surprise.
The most important thing the anti-confederates missed in their analysis is that the Terms of Union generally provide that the British North America Act would apply to the new province of Newfoundland except as specifically provided in the Terms. That's pretty simple.
Therefore, regulation of airspace was and is a federal responsibility. There are no grounds on which the new province could have claimed this jurisdiction without altering the constitution for all provinces. More to the point, even had Newfoundland somehow managed to maintain control over airspace, it would have also been responsible for paying the cost of air navigation and associated regulations. That would hardly have been a windfall for the new province, which according to another opinion piece in Saturday's Telly was hard-done by the economic aspects of the Terms anyways. More on that piece in another post.
Some have gone so far as to claim that Newfoundland lost an economic powerhouse by surrendering control over Gander airport. I have heard an argument made that compares the economic potential of Gander with the potential of Malton (now Pearson) airport noting that the latter prospered while Gander has struggled.
On the face of it, an airport in the middle of the woods can hardly be compared to a national hub located next to the industrial heartland of the country. The whole "airspace" myth has been built around shoddy analysis and logical fallacies. Developments in aircraft technology quickly made post-war Gander much less important for international travel than it had been during the 1940s.
There's another anti-Confederate myth successfully debunked.
For those who wondered about the validity of the Independent's cost/benefit analysis, I think you now have cause to doubt all their conclusions and any further claims they make based on them.
