Noah Jarvis: Doug Ford should block the Liberal high-speed rail boondoggle

Ontario Premier Doug Ford shouldn’t sit around while the federal government burns taxpayer money on a high-speed rail line in his backyard. He should try to stop it.

The proposed Alto high-speed rail line would be 1,000 kilometres long, running from Toronto to Quebec City. The feds say the line would cost taxpayers up to $90 billion. That’s $2,170 per Canadian or $8,680 for a family of four. But there are lots of reasons not to trust the government’s estimate.

Alto has yet to come up with a concrete plan for the high-speed rail line. The company has only demarcated a 10-kilometre-wide corridor that the line could hypothetically run through. No route has been decided on, and the Carney government hasn’t determined how many stops the line will have.

The feds originally announced Alto stops in Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, Laval, Trois Rivières and Quebec City. But now the government is considering adding a stop in Kingston, which would add at least 51.9 kilometres to the line, as well as $3.9 billion in costs. That’s a conservative estimate: big high-speed rail lines tend to be plagued with cost overruns.

California politicians pitched a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 2008. The line was supposed to cost US$33 billion (C$46 billion) and was scheduled for completion in 2020. Now California’s high-speed rail line is scheduled to complete construction in 2032 and is estimated to cost US$231 billion, over seven times the original estimate.

Cost overruns for big Canadian transit projects are nothing new. Ford has had a front-row seat for a few of these boondoggles himself.

When Toronto taxpayers were pitched on a light-rail line called the Eglinton Crosstown in 2007, then-mayor David Miller said the project would cost $2.2 billion with a completion date in 2020. Years of cost revisions and delays led the Eglinton Crosstown to open in February 2026 at a cost of $13 billion.

Ford even pitched his own big transit project — the Ontario Line — to taxpayers in 2019. He promised it would cost taxpayers $10.9 billion, and that it would be complete in 2027. But after delays and cost overruns, the Ontario Line is now projected to cost at least $27.2 billion and won’t open until the 2030s.

The premier should know better than anyone that big cost overruns are the name of the game when building transit megaprojects. And the federal government would not only burn mountains of cash on the Alto line. It would have to take Ontarians’ property too.

Prime Minister Mark Carney changed the federal Expropriation Act in 2026 to allow the government to expropriate property without an attempt to negotiate a fair price for the land.

The minister of transport only has to issue an order to take someone’s land under the new law instead of trying to negotiate with the property owner before resorting to expropriation. And the government is no longer required to hold public hearings for anyone who objects to their land being taken from them.

Many Ontario homeowners and farmers will be in the federal government’s crosshairs. As their premier, Ford is responsible for protecting them.

Taxpayers can’t afford this costly project that will separate Canadians from their property. Especially when the federal government is drowning in debt. The federal government says it plans to borrow $65 billion this year, driving up its total debt to $1.4 trillion.

After having first-hand experience with delayed, over-budget transit projects, Ford should recognize the Alto project is a boondoggle in the making.

Other politicians are already taking notice. One of them, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, is opposing the Alto project.

“We as Conservatives would rather save the $90 billion, let our farmers keep their land, let our communities enjoy their peace and tranquillity,” Poilievre told a crowd protesting the rail line in June.

Both the Parti Québécois and Bloc Québécois are opposing the Alto project as well. Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon says if his party wins the coming provincial election, the Quebec government will block the Alto project from advancing.

But taxpayers shouldn’t have to depend on the results of a coin-flip election in Quebec. Ford can step in and block the project whenever he wants to. So far, he has offered tepid support for the Alto project, but has rightfully expressed concerns for farmers’ property rights.

Sitting on the fence is not the place for the premier of Ontario. Right now, he has the chance to single-handedly save taxpayers billions and protect property owners from having their land taken away. That means opposing the federal Alto project and passing legislation to block it from moving forward.

National Post

Noah Jarvis is the Ontario Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation