Cargojet hires lobbyist, seeks federal cash for new Ontario aircraft facility

The request for federal cash comes months after Cargojet said it signed a 3-year, $160 million deal to operate flights between Vancouver and Hangzhou, China using Boeing 767s.

Cargojet Inc, the Canadian cargo airline whose shares trade on the TSX, is seeking federal money to develop a new Ontario aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul facility, Global News has learned.

The Mississauga-based company has hired a lobbyist to press Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) for “grants, loans or other financial benefits” as it develops the new facility, according to a federal lobbying registration filing.

Cargojet says its plan would see the company build a maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility for its own fleet of 41 Boeing 757 and 767 freighter airplanes.

The facility would also perform work for other companies and their airplanes, the filing adds.

No cost estimate for the Cargojet project was included in the filing, but such facilities typically cost tens of millions of dollars and create hundreds of aviation sector jobs.

In the aviation world, such installations have typically migrated to low cost, low wage paying countries in Asia and South America over the past two decades.

Cargojet mentioned plans for a new MRO facility as being among its broader corporate ambitions in a September PowerPoint presentation to investors.  It didn’t say where in Ontario it would be located or anything about when the company would go ahead with it.

Cargojet has hired Mathieu Ouellet, a Montreal-based lobbyist for KPMG, as the lobbyist to help arrange meetings with ISED, MPs and other government officials to help secure federal support for its project.