Traffic in Canada is heavily concentrated: Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ) alone handles about 46.8 million passengers a year, roughly 49% of the 95 million across the 3 airports listed here. That pattern is typical of a country with one dominant hub carrier feeding a single gateway.
Between them these airports operate 11 runways serving 3 cities, and the country spans 2 time zones, so a domestic flight here can change your watch. Every airport below links to a live map of aircraft observed within available ADS-B coverage around the field.
The next airport in the ranking is Vancouver International Airport (YVR) at about 26.4 million passengers. The gap to YYZ is 20.4 million, while the three busiest airports account for roughly 100% of traffic represented by this list. Most listed traffic is therefore concentrated at the top of the network.
The airports are spread across roughly 6 degrees of latitude and 49 degrees of longitude. That geographic spread makes weather, daylight and local operating conditions materially different across the same national network. Field elevations vary less dramatically than they do in the world's mountain-airport networks. The average across this selected set is 3.7 runways per airport.
Read airport by airport, the selected Canada network is not interchangeable: Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ) has 5 runways and about 46.8 million annual passengers, Vancouver International Airport (YVR) has 3 runways and about 26.4 million annual passengers and Montreal - Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (YUL) has 3 runways and about 22.0 million annual passengers. Those differences matter when comparing a live map. A larger passenger total indicates schedule scale, while runway count describes physical layout; neither number by itself proves how delayed, connected or operationally efficient an airport will be on a particular day.