Why Filing a Noise Complaint Is So Hard
- The GTAA, which creates the noise, also controls the complaint system and public noise metrics.
- Residents are expected to act as forensic time-loggers, even in the middle of the night, just to have harm counted.
- On some days, Pearson can send 500+ flights over the same communities, but will accept only 10 complaints per day by phone from people without digital access.
- When residents confronted the GTAA with proof of missing complaints, thousands of “lost” complaints were suddenly added and reports were quietly changed without any public changelog.
- Past “compensation” programs sent $100 per household in blue-collar communities closest to the airport and $200 per household in more affluent areas, signaling unequal value placed on different neighbourhoods.
For most residents living under Pearson’s flight paths, the same question keeps coming back:
“Why does filing a noise complaint feel like a punishment?”
The honest answer is simple: the system is built that way.
The same body responsible for the noise is also responsible for measuring it, regulating it, and reporting on it. The polluter controls the evidence.
When the polluter also owns the complaint system, every design choice matters: how many clicks, how many fields, how often you must repeat the same information, and how easy it is to give up.
Designed Friction
Filing a noise complaint at Pearson is not “manual” in a harmless, everyday sense. It is deliberately burdensome. The GTAA expects residents — including seniors, families, shift workers, and people with disabilities — to act as their own personal noise-logging investigators.
Consider what the system requires during the very moment harm is occurring:
A plane wakes you up at 2:37 a.m.
You must turn on the light,
put on your glasses,
find your phone or a notepad,
write the exact time to the minute,
try to fall back asleep,
and repeat the entire process for every subsequent overflight.
This is not a complaint system; it is a sleep interruption multiplier. Residents are effectively required to increase their exposure in order to document it.
The GTAA’s system assumes that harmed communities must become forensic time-loggers — collecting and submitting precise timestamps at all hours, including the middle of the night, simply to have an event recognized.
There is no technical justification for this design. Noise monitors, radar tracks, and ADS-B data already exist. Matching timestamps to aircraft movements can be automated. Instead, the burden is placed on the very people losing sleep.
The official instructions are published here:
Toronto Pearson Noise Complaint Process
The process requires residents to manually log each noise event with precise times — regardless of whether it is 3 p.m. or 3 a.m.
For evidence purposes, this is the actual form residents must use to submit each complaint:
https://complaint-ca.emsbk.com/gta8
Every submission requires residents to manually enter the exact time of each noise event — even at 1:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m., or 3:00 a.m. — and to repeat the process for every additional overflight.
This is not a neutral reporting tool. It is an administrative obstacle that filters out the very people most affected.
The 500-to-10 Inequity
On many days, Pearson sends over 500 aircraft across the same neighbourhoods. Every one of those events is tracked automatically through radar, ADS-B, and noise monitors.
But if a resident does not have a smartphone, a computer, reliable internet, or the digital literacy to navigate the online form, the GTAA will accept no more than 10 complaints per day by phone.
In other words:
The airport can send hundreds of flights over your home in a single day,
but you are permitted to acknowledge only ten of them —
and only if you call, wait, and manually report each one.
This is not a meaningful “complaint process”. It is a gatekeeping mechanism that filters out seniors, low-income households, newcomers, people with disabilities, and anyone without constant digital access.
Aircraft movements are automated.
Noise monitors are automated.
Flight tracking is automated.
Only the residents’ burden is kept manual.
The result is predictable: complaint numbers look artificially low, while exposure remains extremely high.
Residents who are unable to use the online form are limited to 10 phone complaints per day, regardless of how many noise events occur.
Meanwhile, actual aircraft operations can exceed 500 movements per day over the same communities.
Differential Treatment: When Some Neighbourhoods Are Worth More Than Others
Several years ago, the GTAA issued prepaid Visa cards to residents in communities affected by persistent aircraft noise. The stated purpose was to “acknowledge the inconvenience” caused by airport operations.
The distribution was not equal. In less affluent, blue-collar communities closest to the airport — the neighbourhoods exposed to the lowest and loudest aircraft — households received $100 prepaid cards per household, not per person. It is an amount barely sufficient to buy a single decent pair of earplugs, let alone acknowledge years of disrupted sleep. In more affluent neighbourhoods, households received $200.
The message was unmistakable:
Some communities were valued twice as much as others.
This was not a small administrative oversight. It was a decision that placed a monetary value on neighbourhoods, reinforcing a pattern of unequal treatment in how noise harm is acknowledged and addressed.
When combined with:
- the 500-to-10 complaint inequality,
- the manual burden placed on digitally excluded residents,
- the refusal to automate noise-to-flight matching,
- and the concentration of night flights over specific postal codes,
a clear pattern emerges: some communities are consistently given less protection, less access, and less recognition of harm.
Blue-collar communities — physically closest to the airport and exposed to the lowest, loudest aircraft — were the ones who received only $100 per household. In practical terms, that is barely enough to buy a single good pair of earplugs for a family that has been losing sleep for years.
These areas experience the highest measurable exposure, yet received the smallest acknowledgement. When the communities facing the greatest harm receive half the compensation of more affluent areas, trust breaks — and inequity becomes structural.
What Happened When We Checked the Numbers
The problems with Pearson’s complaint system are not just theoretical. When our community began comparing the number of complaints we had submitted against what the GTAA reported publicly, we discovered large discrepancies.
At first, the response followed a familiar pattern:
- Step 1 – Deny: initial replies suggested there was no issue and that the reported figures were accurate.
- Step 2 – Deflect: when pressed, the answer shifted to “if we find a few missed complaints, we will add them to the report.”
- Step 3 – Delay: responses slowed, explanations became vague, and no clear correction timeline was provided.
Only after we made it clear that our community had kept its own records — and could prove that complaints were missing — did the numbers change. Suddenly, thousands of complaints were added to the GTAA’s figures.
Around the same time, several people involved in running the complaint department quietly left their roles. But while some personnel changed, the underlying culture did not.
Even now, complaint reports can be altered without any visible trace. Tables are updated in the middle of the night with no version history, no explanation, and no simple way for the public to see what was changed or why.
In a transparent system, you would expect to see:
- “previous version” vs. “updated version” of complaint statistics;
- clear timestamps for when a report was changed; and
- a short note explaining why the numbers were revised.
Instead, complaint reports can be modified without any public changelog. For a system already controlled by the polluter, this lack of audit trail makes independent oversight nearly impossible.
When residents have to keep their own parallel records just to ensure that their complaints are counted correctly, it confirms the core problem of this page: the institution that creates the noise also controls the evidence of harm, and can edit that evidence without warning.
What a Fair Complaint System Would Look Like
A fair system would start from a simple principle: the people being harmed should not have to become investigators to prove it.
In practice, that means:
- automatic linking of noise monitor data and flight tracks to residential areas;
- the ability for residents to register once and authorize “log an event every time I am woken up”, without extra steps at 2:00 a.m.;
- no artificial caps on phone complaints for those without digital access;
- transparent, independent oversight of complaint data and reporting.
None of this is technically difficult. The missing pieces are policy choices and accountability.
Take Action: Tell Decision-Makers About the Complaint System
You can use the following tool to generate a letter to federal, provincial, municipal, and public-health decision-makers. Fill in your details, review the text, and then copy or send it in your own words wherever possible.
Use this tool to generate a letter about the Pearson noise complaint system, including the 500-to-10 inequity and conflict of interest. You can send it to Transport Canada, Health authorities, your MP/MPP, Mayor and Council, or a Board of Health.
Raise Concerns About Pearson’s Noise Complaint System
Fill in your details and who you’re writing to. Then copy the letter or open it directly in your email app.
Where to Direct This Evidence
This evidence – and the template letter above – should be sent to the institutions that oversee aviation policy, health protection, and local planning. Use the directories below to identify the right federal, provincial, municipal, and public-health contacts for your area.
Where This Page Is Going
This page will continue to grow as the Pearson Accountability Alliance documents:
- the specific steps and obstacles built into the current complaint system;
- patterns in how complaints are logged, categorized, under-reported, and revised publicly;
- examples of how automated, resident-centred systems could work instead;
- the gap between what is technically possible and what has been chosen in practice.
The goal is simple: to show, in a way that regulators and elected officials cannot ignore, that the difficulty of filing a complaint is not an accident — it is a design choice that protects throughput, not public health.
Pearson Accountability Alliance
Independent Environmental & Public Health Research for Toronto Pearson Communities.