Chris Selley: The $90B high-speed rail money pit is collapsing in on itself

People protest against the proposed Alto high-speed train in Camden East, Ont. on  Sunday, March 8, 2026. Photo by Elliot Ferguson/The Whig-Standard/Postmedia/File

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“We don’t have the luxury, or the interest, in potentially paying $200 billion for a train for which the primary objective is a desire for ‘nation building’ and reinforcement of Canadian unity by the federal Liberal government,” PQ Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon wrote on social media this week, citing a cost estimate from the Bloc. (The official, utterly unserious estimate — based on per-kilometre building costs in Europe, which are far lower than in North America — is $60 to $90 billion.)

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Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon went so far this week as to say, “there is no Alto project without Quebec,” which was somewhat odd since the government also insists it’s a purely federal project, a “project of national interest” no less, requiring no money from the province (except in taxes, of course). If provinces have a veto over projects of national interest, it doesn’t augur particularly well for Ottawa’s new pipeline deal with Alberta.

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Quebec farmers march across the Alexandra Bridge toward a rally against the Alto high-speed rail project on Parliament Hill on Wednesday June 10, 2026 in Ottawa, Ont. Photo by Elliot Ferguson /The Kingston Whig-Standard

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Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette, for her part, sounded baffled. “(High-speed rail) a large-scale project that’s highly transformative, generating major benefits for Capitale-Nationale (Quebec City) and Quebec, and is funded by the federal government,” she told a Chamber of Commerce audience in Quebec City on Thursday evening. “It will generate benefits in terms of the economy, traffic flow, the environment and mobility. What more could you ask for?”

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To be fair to the flummoxed, the PQ and Bloc used to be on board. Since then, however, the Alto high-speed rail consortium put a remarkably preliminary “plan” out for public consultation. It included a map of potential routes that included vast swathes of central Ontario and Quebec’s North Shore. In so doing they essentially invited landowners to fear the worst — not least in Mirabel, north of Montreal, where landowners haven’t even slightly gotten over the land expropriations necessary to build the ill-fated airport of the same name in the 1970s. Opposing farmers is usually bad politics.

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I doubt your average farmer dislikes the project because it might build “Canadian unity,” though. That was a typically petulant, silly Plamondon flourish: I don’t wish to be part of this country, therefore I oppose any project that might strengthen it!

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Minister of Finance Francois-Philippe Champagne attends a House of Commons Ethics Committee meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa June 11, 2026. Photo by Blair Gable /Postmedia

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No doubt much to the separatist leader’s chagrin, an independent Quebec, which the PQ is promising after a third referendum, would have to do quite a bit of business in Ottawa and Toronto. And if we actually built this high-speed rail line, Quebec politicians and businesspeople of all stripes would certainly use it to get there and back.

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Plamondon also used the opportunity this week to demand “Quebec’s share” of the project — $40 billion, by his calculation — to spend on other infrastructure priorities. So he wants a fair share of the money for a project he doesn’t think should exist (and barely does). Ridiculous.

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Let’s be clear: Unless your nation exists between Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City (insert Liberal Party of Canada joke here), this is a nation-dividing project, not a nation-building project. It’s certainly not building the nation among the Quebec farmers who descended on Parliament Hill in protest this week. Ontario communities affected by the “plan” seem to be roughly divided between those who demand the train stop outside Ned’s General Store and those who want the whole idea to die in a lake of sulphur.