OTTAWA — With a price tag that can only climb into the billions, and an unknown timeline for construction, Justin Trudeau is now leaving a new transportation super-project to his successor as prime minister.
On Wednesday, Liberal leadership contenders vying for his job signalled they support the new plan to build Canada’s first high-speed rail line — a 1,000-km rail system that Trudeau hailed as the “largest infrastructure project in Canadian history.”
But others, including the federal Conservatives, criticized the announcement from a “lame duck government” with a prime minister who will leave office when the Liberals choose a new leader in less than three weeks.
Speaking Wednesday morning in Montreal, Trudeau unveiled a plan to halve train travel times through Canada’s most populous region with a new rail line that will run completely on electricity and travel at speeds of up to 300 km/h between Toronto and Quebec City — with stops in Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, Laval, and Trois-Rivières.
The government now plans to put up $3.9 billion over the next six years to fund the beginnings of a joint venture between a new Crown corporation and a group of companies that includes Air Canada and the firm formerly known as SNC-Lavalin. This money is the public contribution for the “development phase” of the project, when the Crown agency and private companies will design the project, choose the exact route, decide where to place new train stations, consult with affected Indigenous communities, conduct studies and meet regulatory requirements, Transport Minister Anita Anand said Wednesday.
This process could take up to five years, during which time Anand said the total cost of construction will be determined.
Anand later added that negotiations will now begin between the private companies and the Crown corporation, which was renamed Alto on Wednesday. The result of the talks will be a “complex contract” that is expected to be inked in the coming weeks, which Anand said would ensure the best value for taxpayer dollars.
The private group includes Air Canada, AtkinsRéalis (formerly called SNC Lavalin), CDPQ INfra, Keolis, SYSTRA and SNCF Voyageurs.
In Montreal, Trudeau predicted the rail system would slash greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, add billions to Canada’s economy, create thousands of jobs, and bring passenger rail traffic that can get people from Toronto to Montreal in three hours.
“Just think about the 4,000 kilometres of steel rail that we’re going to need to lay. That’s steel, aluminum, copper — resources we have, that we can use here in Canada,” Trudeau said.
“It’s a project fit for Canada: big and bold.”
Anand, meanwhile, suggested the project is a no-brainer for whomever replaces the Trudeau government.
“It’s pretty clear that this is a policy option that should be universally accepted, regardless of the government in place,” Anand said.
With less than three weeks before the Liberal party elects a leader to replace Trudeau as prime minister, Liberal leadership contenders expressed support for the rail plan. Mark Carney, the former central banker, said in Scarborough Wednesday that it “has all the potential” to be the type of project the country needs for economic growth.
Former finance minister Chrystia Freeland and former Liberal House leader Karina Gould also expressed support for the project on Wednesday.
At the same time, opposition parties took aim at the rail plan, for different reasons.
The Conservatives alleged the high-speed rail plan is nothing more than “a lame duck statement from a lame duck government,” with just weeks before Trudeau leaves as prime minister.
“The Liberals had nine years to make progress on high-speed rail, and all they can point to is money spent on high-priced consultants,” said Conservative transport critic Philip Lawrence in an emailed statement.
Citing how the Canadian Pacific Railway took four years to build in the 19th century — an era in which Chinese workers were paid less than half what white workers made, and hundreds of them died, according to the B.C. government — Lawrence said alleged the government is now merely announcing a plan to spend $3.9 billion “on planning and bureaucracy” before construction even begins.
“Common sense Conservatives are committed to making Canada’s rail network more reliable, efficient and cost effective for Canadians and will take real action to improve our transportation system,” Lawrence said.
“We won’t waste time and money.”
The NDP, meanwhile, criticized the Liberals’ plan on Wednesday since it includes a partnership with the private sector. The party argues that will drive up costs and delay construction, and also called for the project to be build with Canadian steel and aluminum.
“We want to see high-speed rail built publicly, for the public good,” said NDP transport critic and B.C. MP Taylor Bachrach, in a statement Wednesday.
The Liberal government first proposed construction of a new “high frequency” rail line from Toronto to Quebec City in 2019. But, as Trudeau acknowledged Wednesday, the vision expanded since then towards a high-speed line that would more drastically slash train travel times.
He said this will ensure “high-speed land transportation” is available between major cities for the next 100 years.
In 2021, then-transport minister Omar Alghabra floated a rough cost estimate for the new rail project at between $6 billion and $12 billion. But the real cost might actually be more than double that, a government source told the Star last fall, depending on how much of the project is built for high speed, where the tracks end up getting built, and because of factors like inflation that have driven up construction costs in recent years.
A 2017 assessment of a possible “ultra-high speed” rail project from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, B.C. estimated such a project — with up to 800 kilometres of track — could cost between $32 billion and $57 billion.
For Paul Langan, a longtime high-speed rail advocate based in southwestern Ontario, such a project is long overdue. Japan, for instance, has had high-speed rail for decades. Other countries like France and China and other members of the G7 have had it for years, too.
The idea has also been studied repeatedly in Canada, but no project has ever proceeded. When Jean Chrétien was prime minister in the early 2000s, for example, the government studied a high-speed rail line in the Windsor-Québec City corridor. But the idea was soon shelved.
Asked about that history on Wednesday, Trudeau told reporters that the current project is “real now,” with “serious” bids to help build it from the private sector, with the funding to get it started.
Langan expressed hope that Trudeau was right.
“It’s as far as we’ve got in the past, so let’s get to the next stage,” he said.
“It’s time.”
