Activist group the People’s Campaign has published a comprehensive special report detailing its objections to the airport redevelopment.

Titled A Bad Deal for Bermuda, the 69-page document is be available electronically and in hard copy from the Bermuda Industrial Union.

At a press conference yesterday, church leader the Reverend Nicholas Tweed condemned the Bermuda Government’s deal with Canadian construction firm Aecon to redevelop L.F. Wade International Airport, at an approximate cost of $250 million.

“One-hundred and eighty-two years after the abolition of slavery in Bermuda, we are now faced with sentencing the island to economic slavery,” he said.

“By this report, we are making a clarion call for us to emancipate ourselves from this bad deal for Bermuda.”

Jason Hayward, president of the Bermuda Public Service Union, promised that the report would highlight how the Government was “seduced” into a deal by Aecon, as well as delving into cost implications, transparency problems, documentation deficiencies and conflicting statements from Bob Richards, the Minister of Finance.

Bermuda Industrial Union president Chris Furbert criticised the “outrageous” price of the planned airport.

“You’re talking about $1,000 per square foot,” he said. “How could that be good value for money? Most of it’s open space.”

The report, which Mr Furbert confirmed was written and compiled by the People’s Campaign team, accuses the Government of dismissing the people’s concerns and snubbing “demands for answers to basic questions relating to how the deal is structured”.

It says: “In spite of public opposition from across the spectrum, the Government has doggedly continued to ignore the people it was elected to serve, as it sells off the birthright of future generations of Bermudians.

“The purpose of this report is to keep the critical, unanswered questions concerning this deal in the public domain, and to query a process that is shrouded in secrecy.

“It appears that every effort is being made to keep the Bermudian people in the dark, until reaching a point of no return, and ultimately resulting in the people resigning themselves to the inevitability of a project.”

Update: this story has been amended to include the document as an attachment. To read it in full, click on the PDF link under “Related Media”