Pearson Accountability Alliance

Municipal notice & failure to act on NEF 2000

1. Why this page exists

For nearly a generation, Toronto Pearson’s Noise Exposure Forecast (NEF 2000) has remained frozen while aircraft movements, night operations, and residential growth under the flight paths have all increased. Municipal planning departments, public health units, and hospital planners have been forced to work with airport noise contours that do not match today’s reality.

In September 2025, Fabio Ovettini (who later founded Pearson Accountability Alliance) wrote to mayors, councillors, planning departments, and public health units across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to put them on formal notice that decisions about housing, schools, and healthcare facilities were being made on the basis of this outdated NEF. Each letter attached detailed exhibits on the lease obligations, federal responsibilities, and documented evidence that the official contours still referenced “1996 NEP and 2000 NEF”. Pearson Accountability Alliance now curates and publishes this correspondence as part of its evidence record.

2. Who was notified and when

Between 16–25 September 2025, notices were sent to:

• City of Toronto – Mayor, councillors, Planning, and Toronto Public Health
• City of Mississauga, City of Brampton, Town of Caledon – Mayors, councils, Peel Public Health, and Planning
• Town of Oakville – Mayor, councillors, Planning and Development, Halton Region Public Health
• York Region – Mayor and Regional Council (via the Chair’s office)

Each notice set out:

• That the NEF used for Toronto Pearson had not been updated since about 2000.
• That housing, schools, and healthcare facilities had been approved in zones misrepresented by the outdated contours.
• That public-health risks from aircraft noise (sleep disturbance, cardiovascular impacts, mental health) were being systematically understated.
• That municipalities faced potential legal exposure if they continued to rely on obsolete data after being formally warned.

Municipal responses to NEF 2000 hazard notice (as of January 2026)

Status as of January 2026 based on correspondence available to Pearson Accountability Alliance.

3. What “failure to act” means in practice

Once a municipality is placed on notice of a potential planning and public-health hazard, it has a duty to at least investigate. That can include asking for updated contours, reviewing its own planning files, consulting its public-health unit, or commissioning independent analysis. Here, none of that is visible.

Instead, municipal systems have carried on approving development, intensification, and infrastructure on the assumption that NEF 2000 still represents reality. For residents under the flight paths, this means continued exposure to night-time noise and pollution that was never honestly disclosed or mitigated in the planning process.

4. Why this matters for hospitals and emergency care

Hospitals serving northwest Toronto and the communities around Pearson are seeing emergency-department volumes that exceed original planning assumptions. When a hospital is sized for one pattern of health demand and the community actually experiences more stress, more cardiovascular risk, more sleep disruption, and more air-pollution burden, the gap shows up as longer waits, hallway care, and staff burnout.

By leaving NEF 2000 unchallenged after September 2025, municipalities have effectively accepted that hospital strain and public-health impacts are an acceptable cost of ignoring obsolete airport-noise data. This page documents that choice.

5. What PAA is asking municipalities to do

• Acknowledge in writing that planning and health decisions have relied on an outdated NEF 2000 for Toronto Pearson.
• Formally request updated noise contours and transparent, public release of all airport noise modelling used by the GTAA and Transport Canada.
• Commission independent studies to quantify the health, social, and infrastructure costs arising from prolonged reliance on NEF 2000.
• Review past approvals for housing, schools, and healthcare facilities in high-exposure areas and disclose risks to the affected communities.
• Explore cost-recovery options and legal remedies for residents, municipalities, and health-care providers who have borne the costs of this failure.

6. Evidence & correspondence

Key documents related to this page (PDFs):

• City of Toronto – NEF 2000 accountability letter with exhibits (Sept 2025)
• City of Brampton, Caledon, Mississauga & Peel – NEF 2000 accountability letter with exhibits (Sept 2025)
• Town of Oakville & Halton Region Public Health – NEF 2000 accountability letter with exhibits (Sept 2025)
• Automatic replies from Mississauga, Halton Region, and York Region

As further responses, documents, or investigative findings emerge, this page will be updated.