The Greater Toronto Airports Authority released a draft plan Tuesday to build a $2 billion airport on land expropriated by Ottawa more than 30 years ago, for just that purpose.

The airport will be built in stages over a 30-year period and may eventually handle 11 million passengers a year.

The airport authority said the facility would be located north of the town of Pickering, just east of Toronto, and would generate $5 billion a year. Money for the airport would be raised privately through bonds and the securities market, said Steve Shaw, vice-president of the airport authority.

Protesters against the building of an airport in their community.

He said the new regional airport would take pressure off Toronto's Pearson International Airport, which generates annual traffic of about 50 million passengers per year.

"Pearson will always be the major international facility, but clearly there is a need for regional facilities," Shaw said. "General aviation needs to be accommodated. Pearson cannot handle that."

Among the general aviation traffic handled by the new airport would be recreational and company aircraft, including helicopters, and flying schools.

Ottawa has been gathering land

The federal government started expropriating land for a second international airport for Toronto more than three decades ago.

It abandoned a Pickering airport project in 1972 after public opposition and a withdrawal of provincial government support.

Some people who live in the area oppose the new plan. Stephen Frederick, president of Voters Organized to Cancel Airport Lands, said the area does not need another airport.

"The [passenger] forecasts are exaggerated to try and substantiate an airport," Frederick told the Globe and Mail. "It's ludicrous and it is just going to lead to a complete waste of resources."

Montreal's Mirabel Airport closed last month after opening to great fanfare in 1975. Supporters predicted that Mirabel would become a gateway to the world, luring 60 million passengers annually by 2010. At its peak, it drew no more than three million people a year.

• FROM OCT. 31, 2004: Mirabel closes doors to passenger flights

The federal government will have the final say on the airport after a public review and an environmental assessment. That's expected to take at least two years.

Shaw estimated that design work could begin by 2007, and that the airport could be open for business by 2012.