even, I suppose, other politicians would be a better way to develop the port." In February 1998, Toronto City Council passed a resolution opposing the bill. The City opposed the bill because the Port of Toronto did not qualify under the criteria proposed by the Act, the diminishing role of the city, difficulties in the planning of land development and the exclusion of elected councillors serving on the TPA board of directors. This was brought to the Senate's attention in an appearance of Toronto's Chief Planner at a Senate hearing in April 1998. The Act was passed in May 1998 with the only amendment being the addition of Hamilton to the Schedule. The Toronto Port Authority (TPA) came into being on June 8, 1999, and the THC was dissolved. The Letters Patent for the new organization provided for it to be governed as an independent agency, with seven directors, one each to be chosen by the federal, provincial and municipal governments, and the others to be representative of the commercial users of the harbour. The TPA received the harbour assets of the former Commission, including inner and outer harbour lands, the airport and the Harbour Commission building. Like the other port authorities, it was to be self-sufficient in its activities, charging fees to the users of the harbour and airport. 2001–2004 Lands dispute and airport bridge plan In 2001, the TPA filed a $1 billion CAD lawsuit over of land that was transferred in the 1990s to the City of Toronto's Toronto Economic Development Corporation (TEDCO) by the Toronto Harbour Commission. The disputed lands, mostly the infill lands of the Don River delta, constituted around 85% of the THC's land assets as of the early 1990s. The lands had been transferred in two separate agreements, in 1991 and 1994 in exchange for a permanent subsidy for the THC. The TPA's legal claim was that the transfer had been done while the majority of directors of the THC were City-appointed, and who had acted in the city's interest and not in the commission's 'fiduciary interest'. And that the deals crippled the THC's ability to be self-sufficient by ending any potential revenues from those lands. As the TPA was inheriting the role and activities of the THC, it was thus crippled itself. TEDCO and the city had earmarked the lands for waterfront revitalization upon the recommendations of the Crombie Commission on the