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MONTREAL — The federal government is moving ahead with the next phase of a high-speed rail network between Quebec City and Toronto, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Wednesday.
The planned rail network will be 100 per cent electric, span approximately 1,000 kilometres, and reach speeds of up to 300 kilometres an hour. There will be stations in Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montréal, Laval, Trois-Rivières and Quebec City.
On Wednesday, Trudeau announced $3.9 billion over six years, starting in the 2024-25 fiscal year, to iron out specifics, including where the stations will be located in each city and the trajectory of the network, before the final phase of the project — construction — can begin. Officials say it’s too soon to estimate the final cost of the project or when it will be completed.
“A reliable, efficient high-speed rail network will be a game changer for Canadians,” Trudeau told a Montreal news conference, just weeks before the Liberals choose a new leader and his time as prime minister comes to an end.
The new rail system, which will be known as Alto, will get travellers from Montréal to Toronto in just three hours. The announcement from Trudeau and Transport Minister Anita Anand comes after years of debate and extensive study of options to improve commuter rail service in Central Canada.
The federal Conservatives were quick to jump on the length of time the Liberals have taken to move the project forward, with the shadow minister for transport calling Wednesday’s announcement “yet another promise with no details that will take years and $3.9 billion on 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,” Philip Lawrence, Conservative MP, said in a statement.
Passenger rail service currently relies on tracks used by freight trains, limiting service frequency and often causing delays. The high-speed train network would be Canada’s largest ever infrastructure project, Trudeau said. “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,” the prime minister said.
Martin Imbleau, president and CEO of Alto, said Canada needs a viable, sustainable alternative to car and plane travel.
“A high-speed rail network is not a luxury. It is a necessity,” Imbleau said. “Highways are more congested than ever, airports are stretched to their limits for too many people, intercity travel is frustrating, unreliable and unsustainable.”
The government has selected Cadence, a consortium of companies, to co-design, build, finance, operate and maintain the rail megaproject. Cadence includes CDPQ Infra — which is building Montreal’s light-rail system, known as the REM, and is a division of Quebec’s pension fund manager — as well as AtkinsRéalis, Keolis, SYSTRA, Air Canada and SNCF Voyageurs.
The government said Cadence will work with Alto as multi-year efforts begin on detailed design, Indigenous consultations, land acquisition and the environmental assessments necessary for construction.
Charles Émond, president and CEO of Quebec’s pension fund manager — Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec — said the project will have a major impact, allowing Canada to catch up with other G7 countries that have high-speed rail. “It is a project that checks so many boxes in the current context that all governments will be able to support it,” Émond said. “It has undeniable merits.”
Canada’s contribution to the co-development phase will be $3.9 billion over six years, starting in 2024-25. The government says this amount is in addition to the almost $372 million earmarked in the last federal budget.
Anand said the project should be viewed in three phases: the procurement phase, which is complete, the current co-development phase that will iron out the specifics, and the third and final construction phase.
“We will hurry slowly, we will be determined, but also cautious, so that we can make the right decisions,” Imbleau said.
Trudeau was confident the rail link would be built even if the Liberals lose the next election, which is scheduled for October but could come as early as the spring. “High-speed rail in this country was always going to be a project that would take long enough to build that it would cover multiple governments,” Trudeau said. “It takes a will and a determination by a government to move forward and lock in this progress.”
The New Democrats said the rail network should be built entirely by the public sector, as private models drive up costs and lead to project delays. As well, the NDP said that with looming U.S. tariffs, the Liberals must require the network to be built with Canadian steel and aluminum.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 19, 2025.
Jim Bronskill and Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press