Taxpayer group slams $90B high-speed rail boondoggle
Taxpayers are on the hook for billions more in government debt after the Prime Minister announced a new high-speed rail project between Toronto and Quebec City.
Taxpayers are on the hook for billions more in government debt after the Prime Minister announced a new high-speed rail project between Toronto and Quebec City. A taxpayer advocacy group is slamming the proposal, arguing that now is not the time for Ottawa to be borrowing more.
“Canadians need help paying for basics; they don’t need another massive bill from the government for a project that only benefits one corner of the country,” said Franco Terrazzano, federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation in a statement on Friday.
“It’s a good bet that high-speed rail between Toronto and Quebec City isn’t even among the top 1,000 priorities for most Canadians.”
The project was announced in February by former prime minister Justin Trudeau in the final weeks of his leadership.
Earlier this fall, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the Major Projects Office would speed up engineering and regulatory work on the railway to get construction underway within four years.
Covering nearly 1,000 kilometres, the high-speed rail network between Toronto and Quebec City is expected to reach speeds of up to 300 km/h.
Trudeau claimed the project would be the country’s largest infrastructure undertaking ever, boosting GDP by up to $35 billion annually and creating over 51,000 jobs.
However, Terrazzano believes it will end up being little more than “another costly taxpayer boondoggle.”
The complete project is projected to cost between $60 and $90 billion, funded by both taxpayer dollars and private investment.
Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon said Friday that connecting Ontario and Quebec was the “logical” first step for the rail network.
“This segment represents a unique opportunity to connect two provinces and quickly generate benefits for travellers, communities and the economy,” MacKinnon told reporters in Gatineau, Quebec.
Meanwhile, Conservative transport critic Dan Albas said the high-speed project “is not proceeding at anything resembling high speed.”
“Today the Liberals are giving themselves a blank cheque for a taxpayer-backed rail line with no price tag that will only benefit Liberal insiders.”
The CTF also pointed out how VIA Rail, the railway company owned by the federal government, has required $1.9 billion in taxpayer funding to cover its operating losses.
“The government is up to its eyeballs in debt and is already spending hundreds of millions of dollars bailing out its current train company; the last thing taxpayers need is to pay higher debt interest charges for a new government train boondoggle,” Terrazzano said.
“Instead of borrowing billions more for pet projects, Carney needs to focus on making life more affordable and paying down the debt.”
This will be the single largest waste of taxpayer money in Canada's history. By orders of magnitude. It is being crammed down our throats by a coalition of the Liberal government, the province of Quebec, and SNC Lavelin (aka Atkins Realis).
It will benefit absolutely no one. It is not needed. It serves no valid purpose. No one in Canada asked for this.
Initially approved by our last PM, an appropriate name for the system would be Justin Trudeau's Revenge.
The promoters tell us it will cost 'somewhere in the neighbourhood' of $900bn. In Realspeak, that translates to something on the order of $1.5 - 2 trillion.
This is pure pork barrel politics. Stunning in its magnitude.
In the unofficial civil service arena in Ottawa, Lavelin is widely known as the 'Brown Paper Bag' company. Their contractual business is generally conducted behind closed doors, with paper bags stuffed with cash. Jody Wilson Raybault - who will forever be a hero of mine - knew this.
To see how well Lavelin performs, do a real-world study of Ottawa's LRT, for which they were the prime contractor. Shovels went in the ground shortly after Jim Watson's (another crooked Liberal sycophant) election - about 2012. The system has been an unmitigated disaster from day one until now, approaching 2026. It is still not complete and its performance record is abysmal, to the point of being comic. Amongst many other things, they attempted to sell the public that the system was experiencing - and I quote, 'Square Wheel Syndrome'. An oh yes, mustn't forget, Lavelin did its mandatory pre-contract real world study of the system - in Houston Texas. Slightly different climate from Ottawa.
It is noteworthy that prior to Watson't election, a public plebiscite was held on the idea of an LRT.
68% of Ottawa's citizens voted against it. But, with the backing of Trudeau and Lavelin, Watson simply force fed us the system.
Along with most Canadians, I get sticker shock every time I visit a grocery store. I am 7+ years without a family doctor - I could literally challenge the capacity of this application by listing the existential things needed by Canadians today.
A high speed rail between Quebec City and Toronto is not on that list. It is a zero-value proposition.
Please! Someone stop this insanity.
Trudeau's last flipping of the bird to Canadians as he stepped down in disgrace. But Carney will follow through, of course, because he likes how his nose feels when he thumbs it at us. And $60-90 bn? Pick the higher one and add a zero, because this is govt we're talking about.