Trudeau just announced a high speed rail project that will link Toronto and Quebec City:
I predict this will be immediately cancelled by the next government.
Is it 3.9 billion dollars to actually build it or that much just to get started on it? If the Trans Mountain Pipeline is any indicator, the actual cost of this rail line should be somewhere around 47 billion dollars all in.
This strikes me as purely symbolic and a ridiculous waste of money. Only in Justin’s fevered imagination is there enough traffic between Toronto and Quebec City to justify this. The real practical transportation demand is between Toronto and Montreal, which has very heavy air traffic and would be well served by fast, modernized rail service directly from one downtown to another. The present service isn’t bad but it could be better and definitely faster.
My guess is that the capital cities of Quebec and Ontario will be connected. I agree that it is more important that Toronto and Montreal be connected, those being two very important business centres, but leave out Quebec City, and Quebecers will get upset (“But it is our capital city, why can we not connect to Ontario’s capital city?”).
But I find it interesting that Justin, who (let’s remember, has quit his job) is caring so much about the Corridor, while ignoring transportation needs in the west. People out here need to get around too, and high-speed rail in the Corridor isn’t going to do a damn thing for them out here. We’re stuck with no rail service, no intercity Greyhound buses, and almost non-existent air service (just try and get a flight out of Lethbridge, Alberta, on Air Canada—hint: they don’t exist, and Westjet has only one flight a day to only Calgary). Yet he claims to care about the climate, and imposes a carbon tax, on people who have no other way to get around other than taking the car! Well, that sums up Albertans, given no public transport that the lack of of Air Canada, Greyhound, and Via Rail have left us with.
Justin is just another Laurentian Elite who doesn’t understand western Canada.
There is no reasonable rail connection between Laval and Montreal’s Central Station. So - we’re either looking at a 10 km tunnel, or a station at Dorval/Lachine - completely skipping downtown. (in theory - you could still go downtown, but that would mean close to an hour extra time for Quebec-Toronto travellers who would have to double back).
To be able to move people along a high speed corridor between QC-Mon-Ott-Tor is a dream. I love public transportation, “big idea” infrastructure projects, and enormous investments in interconnecting Canadians.
My natural pessimism/cynicism can wait, I’m enjoying the action, commitment, and unity too much right now.
For the benefit of those with a less historical bent, Robert Stanfield was the Progressive Conservative premier of Nova Scotia 1956 to 1967 and federal party leader and leader of the opposition 1967-1976, and thus Trudeau père’s political foe. His family owned the Stanfield underwear company, making the diaper reference even more apt.
Well, the fundamental problem with any transportation service is that, the more dense the area served is, the better it runs, and the more profitable it is. They don’t make money in the gaps between stations, after all. The longer those gaps are, the less profitable it becomes to run, no matter if we’re talking buses, trains or planes.
Even in Ontario, with the densest population in Canada, we have trouble running decent inter-city busses. We had a few companies back when I was in University, in the late 80s to early 90s era, but most of those folded sometime in the 2000s. We now have a hodge-podge of smaller bus companies that run less frequently between Ottawa and Toronto. If you can’t maintain it in Ontario, you probably can’t maintain it anywhere else in Canada, absent huge subsidies from the government.
Even this new train might not work, assuming it ever gets built. It’s supposed to go through Ottawa, and I can tell you, after living here most of my life, Ottawa absolutely sucks at building any infrastructure. No matter where you try to place it, someone is going to complain.
Your take on the west’s transportation problems are appropriate, and you can include BC in it. But 2 things struck me:
Not to put too fine a point on it, “the west” got what it voted for.
I just look at the stats. Lethbridge is 105K people and the 4th largest city in Alberta. Ontario has 22 cities bigger than Lethbridge, you have to go down the list to Brantford to find a comparable sized city. Brantford has no commercial airport and you have to travel to small airports in Waterloo, London, Hamilton, or all the way to Toronto.
You can’t blame a lack of density in Alberta on Ottawa.
True, but what about buses? There no longer is Greyhound bus service western Canada. No passenger rail.
As Spoons says, the only way to get around is by car. Which the federal government wants to discourage because of carbon emissions.
So why is the federal government keen to subsidise public transport in Ontario and Quebec, and not in western Canada?
At a time when we need submarines and export opportunities for our resources, Trudeau pushes for trains. This shows perfectly why we got (are getting) rid of him - he is all for style, and not substance. And the Liberal party should be punished with him, why reward our descent into irrelevance with another 5 years of clueless, meandering leadership. We need a Churchill, not a Neville Chamberlain.
It’s interesting, I guess, but in terms of high speed rail and urban transit it is beyond any reasonable question that the highest needs are in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor. There isn’t any equivalently sized need anywhere else in the country.
I agree there’s zero question that the Laurentian elites - a term I typed before I saw that you used it - care way, way more about the folks in the Ottawa valley than they do about people in Lethbridge. I would also point out that in terms of being insular Laurentian elites, Trudeau is bad even by the standards of federal politicians. Most of his political inner circle are his old buddies who went to his wedding, a rather stunning example of not being conscious of the need for diversity of viewpoint in a workplace.
If by this you mean “a resolute anti-Nazi,” I agree. But let’s remember
that’s a pretty low bar, though some Canadian politicians may not be able to clear it
Churchill was wrong on virtually every other political and social issue, from imperialism to suffrage
We can only pick from the menu offered. Of the presumptive choices at the next election, Mark Carney is the only one that makes sense.
I thought Danielle Smith was all about a capitalist economy? Shouldn’t Alberta be looking at solving transportation issues within the province? GO Transit services routes like that in Ontario.
Again, this is a density issue. If I have 12M people along a 1000km route, that’s 12000/km. My back of the envelope math is that is twice the density of a Calgary-Lethbridge route of 1.4M over 200km and the bulk of that would be Lethbridge residents accessing Calgary whereas the Toronto-Quebec City corridor is both ways.
As nice as high speed rail would be between Toronto and Montreal, I am becoming a little concerned about the federal government not starting up the process of hardening our defense against American invasion. I’d like high speed rail too but don’t see the point in building it to help out American occupiers. Our priorities are rapidly falling out of date.
I think Canada generally suffers from the same problems with construction costs as the USA and UK, so $3.9 billion would barely scrape the surface of actually building it.
Troop transport? Evacuation? Something for patriots to sabotage once the occupiers are in place?
Tongue firmly in cheek, btw
On the question of Canada’s military response to an American invasion (not going to fight the hypothetical here), some have suggested a drone program. Canada did announce a drone program a few years ago, to the tune of close to 4 billion dollars.
The contracts were with an American firm.
If we were serious about an American threat, we would have to start a new and vigorous “made in Canada” program on everything from food to drones. The US companies, and their Canadian economic and political allies who would lose out if we had such a program would not be keen on that.
As a historical precedent, we might look at the National Energy Program of the 1970s-1980s. This was meant to let Canada, not multinational corporations, benefit from Canadian oil and gas. That was bitterly opposed by the multi/transnational corporations and their Canadian allies in business and governments.
As for the benefits of trade agreements, this article may provide grounds for some sober second thought. Time To Think Beyond ‘Worthless’ Free Trade Agreements: Economists
Again, until we are serious about real Canadian control of the economy, aimed at delivering for all Canadians, we’ve already lost sovereignty.
But, it will be a bullet train.
I’ll see myself out.
I think your concern here is quite overblown. It’s true that, historically, America has a tendency, when it sees something that it likes, to just take it – e.g.- Hawaii. But Hawaii didn’t have the kinds of powerful alliances that Canada has. The only real threat here is economic, and even that is only temporary. Anything the US does that hurts the Canadian economy is hurting themselves, too. Trump is just too stupid to understand that.