Prime Minister Mark Carney is defending one of the his government’s major infrastructure projects: a high-speed rail service between Toronto and Quebec City.
Recently there’s been push back from opposition members of parliament as well as from communities, many of them in southern Ontario, that might be affected. The leader of the official opposition in Ottawa, Pierre Poilievre, is calling for the multi-billion project to be cancelled.
Dozens of organizations, municipalities, conservation groups, farming associations and elected officials are expressing concerns about the project. They say the concerns include loss of road access, farmland and biodiversity and impacts on water sources, emergency services and recreational areas. Most of them are located on the north shore of Lake Ontario and within the proposed route of the high-speed rail project.
"We think that it’s a waste of money," Poilievre said. "It’s going to drive up the cost of living; taxes are going to be higher. It will cost every family $8,000 in higher taxes for a project that they will not use. It will ruin communities, many of whom will see the trains tear apart land, even though the local residents will not be able to use it."
Andrea Glenn runs Gibbs Honey, an apiary in Vankleek Hill, in eastern Ontario about halfway between Ottawa and Montreal. Glenn said her main concern is the lack of information.
"I think it was early in February that the Vankleek Hill consultation date was," she said. "There was a concern because we couldn’t find out any information. And, obviously, at the same time I was also learning abut Bill C15 that was in its first reading at the time, and that allows for extraordinary measures in terms of expropriation, so that became incredibly concerning."
The $90 billion project will be run by a new federal crown corporation called ALTO, a subsidiary of Via Rail and will be accountable to the Canadian Parliament. The 600-mile high-speed rail line will be built in phases beginning in 2029. The corridor being looked at will not be the final route — that will be determined after consultations and studies — and ultimately will be less than 200 feet wide.
Not everyone is against the high-speed rail line.
"I think that the government needs to come out and calm some of these concerns — some of the cost concerns," said former Conservative member of Parliament Dean Del Mastro. "These are legitimate concerns that need to be reviewed. But to just come out and say: 'Hey, we’re against this.' We’ll never build anything in this country if that’s our attitude."
Carney recently defended the project during a news conference in Brampton, Ontario.
"When you look at overall what the high-speed rail does, it’s more cost effective, it’s more sustainable," he said. "It’s connecting our communities. It’s going to be faster and it's going to create a huge number of jobs directly and be a big boost to our economy over time."
Carney said the project will create more than 50,000 jobs and provide more than $35 billion to the Canadian economy.
Matti Siemiatycki, the Director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto and member of the advisory panel for the high-speed rail project, isn't convinced this is the right project for the country at the moment.
"One of my biggest concerns about this project is that a lot of the detailed information that we would need in order to understand if the benefits outweigh the costs, have not been released in public," he said. "And when we’re talking about $60–$90 billion of public investment, we really need to have all of this information out in the public domain so that we can make the best decision possible."
