Pierre Poilievre says he would cancel high-speed rail line between Toronto and Quebec City

“It will make consultants, lobbyists, lawyers, bureaucrats and other Liberal insiders fabulously rich, while doing nothing for the millions of hard-working taxpayers and landowners who will suffer.”

Alto’s proposed electric rail line would run trains at speeds of 300 kilometres an hour and up, and include stops in Peterborough, Ottawa, Laval, Montreal, Trois-Rivières and Quebec City. The 1,000 kilometre railway, the government says, could halve travel times between stops. Construction on the project, which comes with a price tag of $60 billion to $90 billion, could begin as soon as 2029, with each section of the rail line expected to take years to complete. 

The project — which Poilievre said “nobody wants” — would serve one of the most densely populated corridors in the country, including urban centres in which the Conservatives need to grow support to increase their seat count in the House of Commons.   

The Carney government views the proposal as a nation-building project that would drive economic growth, and has tasked its Major Projects Office with working to “accelerate engineering, regulatory, and permitting work” to fast-track the rail line’s construction.

Alto is currently conducting public consultations over its proposed routes — a process that has prompted municipalities to push for their inclusion along the final corridor, and sparked opposition from farmers and landowners in rural areas who fear their land might be impacted or expropriated. 

“Potentially even farmers like these here will lose large parts of their lands and have their way of life completely destroyed,” said Poilievre, who was delivering his remarks from a local family farm.

Some Conservative MPs in Ontario have already vocally opposed the project, including Lanark—Frontenac’s Scott Reid and Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands MP Michael Barrett. 

Barrett told reporters in Ottawa last week that he was concerned about the lack of public consultation in some communities.

“You have all of these local municipalities who are … speaking out against this proposed plan,” said Barrett, who was handing out “Stop Alto” pins. 

“There is some pragmatism that we’ve heard from some levels of government, where they’re saying, ‘What about improving on Via … high frequency rail, or using that corridor that exists? And that’s not part of the plan, it’s not part of even part of the conversation with Alto and the (Liberal) government.”

Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon said in statement late Tuesday that Poilievre was “turning his back on Canadians from Quebec City to Toronto and the communities in between.”

“Investing in high-speed rail means building a more connected, competitive Canada, and proves Canada can get big things done,” MacKinnon wrote, calling the Alto project a “generational investment” that would boost the country’s GDP by billions, spur the creation of jobs and streamline travel. 

Poilievre said if he were prime minister, he would use the tens of billions of dollars saved from canning the project to “lower the cost of government, to lower the cost of living.”

“We will green-light projects that pay for themselves, projects that make money rather than taking money,” the Conservative leader said. 

In the 2025 federal election campaign, Poilievre pledged to create a “national energy corridor to rapidly approve and build critical infrastructure,” with the goal of fast-tracking approvals for projects like new railways to transport resources — not people — across the country.