Canada’s plan for high-speed rail are picking up steam with a multi-billion-dollar funding boost.
The federal government announced the new funding and that a consortium has been chosen to develop the planned link between Toronto and Quebec City on Wednesday.
The project, dubbed “Alto,” would see fully electric trains transport passengers along the highly trafficked rail corridor at speeds of 300 kilometres per hour along 1,000 kilometres of track.
“A reliable, efficient high-speed rail network will be a game changer for Canadians, slashing travel times by half, getting you from Toronto to Montreal in three hours,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in Montreal.
Trudeau said the train would make stops in Laval, Trois-Rivières, Montréal, Ottawa and Peterborough.
According to a release from the Prime Minister’s Office, Cadence is a consortium of “world-renowned companies” that have expertise in design, development and operation of large-scale transportation infrastructure.
As part of the announcement, Transport Minister Anita Anand said the federal government will be spending $3.9 billion over the course of five years on the latest phase of the development, with the Cadence consortium chosen to co-design, build, finance, operate and maintain the project.
That funding is in addition to the $371.8 million provided in the 2024 budget.
Anand said the current co-development phase will occur in three stages.
The first stage of procuring the train is underway, with the bidder having been chosen.
The procurement process had been launched in 2022. Three consortiums submitted bids to tackle the project, with Cadence being the final choice.
The second co-development phase will include the design of track, route alignment, station placement, regulatory work and permissions, and consultations with Indigenous communities and the studies that are needed before construction.
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“The Toronto to Quebec City corridor is a cornerstone of Canada’s economic development,” Anand said.
“Nearly half of our nation’s population lives here and the existing transportation network has not kept pace with our historic population and economic growth.
“We will be amongst our G7 partners who all have some form of high-speed rail.”
Trudeau went on to suggest that with contracts to be signed soon and development to begin, it could be “very difficult to turn back on” should a different party become government in the next federal election, which will occur later this year.
Anand added that a “plan of execution” would be in place for not only the current Liberal government but future governments “to invest in.”
“It’s pretty clear that this is a policy option that should be universally accepted regardless of the government in place at the time,” she said.
Despite the comments, Philip Lawrence, the Conservative transport critic, told Global News in a statement that Wednesday’s announcement is a “lame duck statement” that should be added to the “pile of endless promises” that he said are then broken by the federal government.
Lawrence went on to criticize what he said was a lack of details and the time frame it would take for planning and bureaucracy “without laying a single piece of track.”
“The Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in four years. This government is asking for over a decade simply to figure out what they should build,” Lawrence wrote.
He added that his party was committed to making the country’s rail network “more reliable, efficient and cost effective for Canadians.”
The bidding process
The federal Liberals laid out plans for a new rail corridor in 2021, with Ottawa pegging the total cost between $6 billion and $12 billion.
The goal for the project was to get more passengers to their destinations quicker than what is often seen onboard Via Rail, which operates on tracks owned largely by Canadian National Railway Co., which gives priority to freight trains. That has lead to delays on the tracks along the corridor.
The three consortia that were selected to submit proposals were Cadence — which includes AtkinsRealis (formerly SNC-Lavalin) and Air Canada, Intercity Rail Developers, and QConnexiON Rail Partners.
All three were asked for a pair of bids, one for a conventional rail network where trains would top out at 200 km/h — the current limit is about 160 km/h — and one for a high-speed rail corridor.
'This is real now,' Trudeau says
Asked Wednesday what was different about the announcement, given previous discussions for high-speed rail, Trudeau said with a consortium chosen creating the link between the two cities was “real now.”
“For the first time in a long time, and it’s taken us years as a government over the course of three different mandates to get to this point, but we are now seeing high-speed rail as a reality for Canadians,” he said.
He added, when asked about reassuring the rail’s success, the five years that will be taken for development will be focused on ensuring access to high-speed land transportation between the cities, with the focus on making sure they’re “getting right for Canadians.”
Anand told reporters that Alto and Cadence will have a public-private partnership, and that Cadence will “ensure reliability.”
“We will be very prudent with taxpayer dollars in this co-development phase to ensure not only that reliability accrues at the end of that five year process, but also that the risk of non success is completely minimized,” Anand said. “In fact, Cadence as a bidder was chosen because of its ability to minimize that risk.”
According to Martin Imbleau, the president of Alto, formal agreements will be finalized with Cadence in the coming weeks and the development phase will begin.
He said there are challenges in the Quebec City to Toronto corridor, with highways “more congested than ever” and airports “stretched,” adding that some European countries have shown the benefits of having a reduction in travel times between key cities.
“This is a bold step forward for Canada, a high-speed rail network is not a luxury, it is a necessity,” Imbleau said.
—with files from The Canadian Press
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