THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, December 9, 2025
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met with videoconference this day at 9 a.m. [ET] to study the subject matter of those elements contained in Divisions 1, 2, 24, 28 and 29 of Part 5 of Bill C-15, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on November 4, 2025.
Senator Larry W. Smith (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning. My name is Larry Smith. I’m senator from Quebec and chair of the committee. I would ask my colleagues to introduce themselves, starting on my left.
Senator Simons: Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Mohamed: Farah Mohamed, Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: Good morning. René Cormier from New Brunswick.
Senator Quinn: Jim Quinn from New Brunswick.
Senator Arnold: Good morning. Dawn Arnold from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator Lewis: Todd Lewis, Saskatchewan.
[Translation]
Senator Aucoin: Réjean Aucoin from Nova Scotia.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Dasko: Donna Dasko, Ontario.
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues. I’d like to welcome everyone with us today, as well as those listening to us online on the Senate’s website, sencanada.ca.
We’re meeting today to continue our study on the subject matter of those elements contained in Divisions 1, 2, 24, 28 and 29 of Part 5 of Bill C-15, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on November 4, 2025.
Today we will hear from witnesses specifically on Division 1, which creates the high-speed rail network act. With that, I would like to introduce our first pane: from Transport Canada, Vincent Robitaille, Assistant Deputy Minister, Major Projects; from Public Services and Procurement Canada, Linda Jenkyn, Director General, National Capital Area Portfolio and Accommodations Management; from the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, Stéphanie Johnson, Director General, Strategic Integration; and from Alto, Martin Imbleau, President and Chief Executive Officer
Our witnesses are accompanied by a number of other officials from each department, as well as officials from the Department of Justice Canada. They are here to assist in answering any technical questions on this division. Should any of these officials be called to the table to answer questions, please state your name and title before you begin speaking. I welcome all people who are here to support the speakers.
Thank you all for joining us today. Witnesses will provide opening remarks of approximately five minutes, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with senators. I will now invite Mr. Robitaille to give his opening remarks.
Vincent Robitaille, Assistant Deputy Minister, Major Projects, Transport Canada: Thank you for the invitation to appear again.
Today, I will outline the respective roles of the organizations responsible for advancing the high-speed rail initiative, as well as the co-development approach that underpins this work.
From 2019 to 2022, the government assessed various delivery options for what was then known as high-frequency rail. This work concluded that a collaborative public-private partnership would deliver the best outcomes for Canadians.
[Translation]
The analysis also concluded that Canada needed a dedicated project office to lead the development and implementation of the initiative.
In 2022, VIA TGF—now Alto—was created as a wholly owned subsidiary of VIA Rail while operating independently. This structure allows Alto to benefit from the corporate independence and agility necessary to advance the initiative and maintain world-class expertise.
The Government of Canada, through the Minister of Transport, remains the owner of the high-speed rail initiative and sets the strategic objectives to be achieved.
Transport Canada supports the minister, in particular by developing legislative and regulatory proposals.
[English]
From 2022 to 2025, Transport Canada and Public Services and Procurement Canada, with the support of Alto, conducted a procurement process.
Following the evaluation of the proposals, a consortium named Cadence achieved the highest score and was selected as the private partner.
[Translation]
The evaluation of proposals also showed that high-speed rail, rather than high-frequency rail, offered better value for money. Consequently, in February 2025, the Prime Minister announced that the initiative would proceed as a high-speed rail project and launched the co-development phase.
Co-development corresponds to the phase during which the project design and implementation plans will be developed. This phase includes field studies, impact studies, consultation and Indigenous participation activities, and the acquisition of the necessary land to prepare for the start of construction.
In 2029, once co-development is complete for an initial section connecting a first pair of major cities, the government will make a final investment decision allowing Alto and Cadence to launch the construction phase.
[English]
Several other federal partners and organizations will also be involved during the co-development phase. Allow me to briefly describe the key actors.
I will start with the two departments joining us today. Public Services and Procurement Canada will provide support for the land acquisition and expropriation process required for the initiative. The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada will lead the impact assessment process, as per the Impact Assessment Act.
[Translation]
Other organizations will also support the initiative. VIA Rail will provide comprehensive technical advice and expertise to Transport Canada and Alto during co-development. Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada will offer its expertise on community benefits agreements and strategies to increase housing supply near stations. Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada will provide advice on the government’s overall approach to fulfilling its constitutional obligation to consult with Indigenous peoples. The Canadian Transportation Agency will provide expertise and information on the environmental and technical impacts of railway construction and operation.
[English]
In conclusion, the high-speed rail network act will allow our country to realize the enormous economic benefits associated with this initiative. Thank you for inviting me. I will be pleased to respond to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Robitaille. We will now invite Ms. Jenkyn to give her opening remarks.
Linda Jenkyn, Director General, National Capital Area Portfolio and Accommodations Management, Public Service and Procurement Canada: Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I am the Director General of the National Capital Area Portfolio and Accommodations Management sector within the Real Property Services Branch at Public Services and Procurement Canada, or PSPC.
I want to extend my apologies for being unable to be with you all in person, but I am pleased to be here virtually with my colleagues here today to discuss the high-speed rail network act. This proposed legislation is a key element in delivering the ability of the high-speed rail project.
[Translation]
The Minister of Government Transformation, Public Works and Procurement has full authority to expropriate parcels of land when necessary for federal public works or other purposes in the public interest.
As the current regime provided for in the Expropriation Act was not designed for a project of this scale, the bill proposes amendments to enable the rapid acquisition of the land necessary for the implementation of the high-speed rail network.
[English]
In the context of this railway project, PSPC is responsible for conducting the expropriation process under the new regime and supporting Transport Canada in acquiring the necessary lands to deliver this ambitious project on behalf of Canadians. In carrying out this role, we will work closely with Justice Canada to oversee the expropriation process, ensuring transparency, fairness and full compliance with the dedicated expropriation regime.
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to discuss the high-speed rail network act. We look forward to working with the committee in answering your questions today.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Jenkyn. I will now ask Ms. Johnson to give her opening remarks.
[Translation]
Stéphanie Johnson, Director General, Strategic Integration, Impact Assessment Agency of Canada: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Honourable Senators, my name is Stéphanie Johnson, and I am the Director General of the Strategic Integration Directorate at the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada.
I’d like to begin by acknowledging that we are gathered in the unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.
[English]
I am pleased to appear before the committee today to provide information on the Impact Assessment Act and provisions related to the impact assessment process under the high-speed rail network act.
The Impact Assessment Act and regulations establish an efficient, timely process that focuses on the assessments of projects with the greatest potential for negative impacts in areas of federal jurisdiction, such as impacts on fish and fish habitat to prevent or mitigate significant adverse effects from those projects.
[Translation]
The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, IAAC, is responsible for implementing the Impact Assessment Act and its core responsibility is to conduct high-quality federal assessments of proposed projects.
It is IAAC’s role to facilitate the sustainable development of these projects through an open and transparent process, to coordinate Crown consultation and meet the duty to consult, to uphold the federal government’s responsibility to mitigate adverse federal effects within federal jurisdiction, and to inform and coordinate federal permits. Through the assessment process, project proponents are able to gain social license to facilitate project development.
[English]
The high-speed rail network act includes two provisions related to the Impact Assessment Act. First, since the high-speed rail project would be implemented into segments or city pairs, the act clarifies that each segment would be a designated project, subject to the Impact Assessment Act. For context, the Impact Assessment Act identifies major projects through the Physical Activities Regulations, often referred to as the “project list.” For railway lines, the list provides that freight or intercity railway lines that require a total of 50 kilometres or more of new right-of-way would be subject to an impact assessment. The high-speed rail network act would ensure that each segment would be assessed under the Impact Assessment Act, whether or not the segment requires a total of 50 kilometres or more of new right-of-way. This provides greater certainty that each segment will be subject to the same assessment process.
Second, the high-speed rail network act would clarify that land acquisition, including expropriation, can proceed before completion of the impact assessment under the Impact Assessment Act for this project.
[Translation]
As the project advances, IAAC is ready to support the proponent through the impact assessment process, including coordinating Indigenous consultations to facilitate the identification of key issues for the impact assessment and permitting process.
Thank you again for the opportunity to be here today. I will be happy to answer your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
I now invite Mr. Imbleau to make his opening statement.
Martin Imbleau, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alto: Honourable senators, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you about Alto and the impact of Bill C-15 on our ability to carry out the project.
[English]
Senators, a great deal has happened since my last visit to a Senate committee. The project is more advanced than it has ever been, and I welcome the opportunity to provide an update and answer your questions.
Alto is a high-speed rail project like the ones that are seen and used in Europe. There are nearly 1,000 kilometres of electric, dedicated passenger rail linking Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, Trois-Rivières, Laval and Québec City. Fast, frequent and reliable, it will cut travel times in half, reduce congestion and strengthen economic prosperity.
Last February, the government announced three important decisions: the selection of a high-speed rail that Mr. Robitaille mentioned; the selection of Cadence, a consortium with strong Canadian roots and international expertise; and the funds for the development and pre-construction phase.
Recently, in September, the government committed to a four-year construction start and designated the project as a transformative initiative to support that target. In 2025, we have moved from an idea to a real project that is known, required and desired. From a small team, we are now a dedicated group of close to 500 people across Alto and Cadence. We have shifted from explaining the “why” to now explaining the “how” this will be done.
[Translation]
In early 2026, Alto will launch a public consultation process combining open houses, virtual sessions and round tables. Of course, consultations already under way with Indigenous communities will continue in parallel. The feedback we receive will help us define the corridor, which is currently still quite broad. This feedback will help us determine a more precise route.
[English]
A project of this scale simply cannot be delivered without the proper framework that provides clarity, not only for Alto but also for the industries, stakeholders and Indigenous communities. Predictability is the name of the game.
The measures proposed by the government are, in that regard, critical for Alto. However, we recognize that these measures come with responsibilities. Limitations imposed on a private property are sensitive, and expropriation is a loaded word; it’s not something that we take lightly. Our philosophy, whether in urban or rural areas, will be, respect, transparency and dialogue in all phases of the process. Of course, voluntary agreements will be the preferred approach. That is what I’ve been doing over 30 years of developing large infrastructure in the country.
However, the technical requirements of high-speed rail require some measures.
[Translation]
For example, the right of first refusal will enable us to prevent speculation. Provisions prohibiting certain types of work will enable us to avoid artificially inflated valuations.
The bill and certain measures will be necessary for Alto. However, the tools we are talking about will not be useful right away, but at least they will be known to ensure visibility.
Here are two final points.
[English]
Finally, the bill also protects Indigenous Knowledge shared with us. Indigenous Knowledge is central to the project, and we are engaging with 40 Indigenous groups, some that are directly involved in our fieldwork, traditional land-use studies and Indigenous Knowledge studies. This amendment recognizes their important contribution.
The bill also ensures that our partners will operate in both official languages.
[Translation]
As we see it, that’s self-evident. In fact, it’s a point of pride.
[English]
We are headquartered in Montreal, but we operate in both provinces. We also have a completely bilingual executive team.
[Translation]
Thank you for your attention. I’ll be pleased to answer all of your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Imbleau. We will now move on to questions from the senators.
[English]
I will advise senators that you’ll have approximately five minutes each for the first round. We will have a second round of questions, if time permits. We will start with our deputy chair.
Senator Dasko: Thank you, witnesses, and thank you, Mr. Robitaille, for coming back to speak with us. Many of us appreciated your testimony last week. I certainly learned a lot.
I want to start with Ms. Johnson. I have a question about environmental impact assessment. I was looking at the McGill report on the rail, and, among other things, it suggested that there was relatively low public concern about environmental impacts. If you take that as a reality and then, with the expedited process, aren’t we risking limiting the environmental impact process when it comes to this rail line?
Also, you mentioned that your activity focuses on areas of impacts in federal jurisdiction. I want to understand what that means for areas that are not in federal jurisdiction in terms of environmental impacts, including farmlands, communities, habitats — those potentially impacted areas.
Those are my questions. Thank you.
Ms. Johnson: On the expedited process, the agency is working to implement efficiency measures to reduce timelines while maintaining rigour, environmental protection and the protection of Indigenous rights. It’s doing that for all projects right now; it’s not just for this one. We’re doing that within the bounds of the Impact Assessment Act, and we will ensure we implement every requirement.
There is a way of doing that without compromising environmental protection. It’s about focusing on the key issues, engaging with Indigenous Peoples earlier and focusing or tailoring the information we might request from the proponent, taking into account what else might be going on. It might be doing things in parallel rather than sequentially.
There’s a lot we can do to be more efficient without compromising environmental protection or Indigenous rights, and always staying within the bounds of what the act requires us to do. That’s to answer your first question.
On the other question, this project is a federal undertaking. In those cases, we can look at things beyond federal effects. It’s outside my area to expand on that at this point, but we will obviously ensure we look at all impacts this project might have.
Senator Dasko: So you would be going beyond areas that are within federal jurisdiction in terms of the impacts in areas outside?
Ms. Johnson: We’ll look at fish and fish habitat and migratory birds, species at risk, impacts on Indigenous people and Indigenous rights. We’ll look at issues like noise and vibration from the train and so on and so forth.
Senator Dasko: How are the [Technical difficulties] impacts supposed to be assessed?
Ms. Johnson: I feel like I can’t answer that. I’m sorry. I can come back to the committee with that. Because it’s a federal undertaking, my understanding is it would be larger than what we would typically look at and not limited to federal effects.
Senator Dasko: I’m led to think those impacts will not be studied?
Ms. Johnson: I’m sorry, I don’t want to give that impression at all. I feel like it’s a bit beyond what I might be able to explain today.
Senator Dasko: I’ll come back later if there’s time. Thank you.
Senator Lewis: Thank you, witnesses. I’m going to ask a legal opinion on a couple of questions here.
Number one — and if a lawyer can’t answer this at this time and you want to send in a written submission, that would be great, too — under clause 4 of the act, what does declaring high-speed rail network to be works for the general advantage of Canada do?
Secondly, can you confirm that the declaratory power only affects jurisdiction and not spending?
Mr. Robitaille: The intent of declaring the project to be of general advantage of Canada is to confirm federal jurisdiction over the project. Typically, if you have a railway that crosses provincial boundary, it is considered under federal jurisdiction. But because the project is going to be advanced in segments between major city pairs — there will be no segments, for example, between Ottawa and Toronto or potentially between Montreal and Quebec City — that would be solely located in one province. We can’t have different legislative measures or regimes applied. The intent of this provision is to have absolute clarity that the new railway will be under federal jurisdiction, much like what was done with the privatization of the CN back in the 1990s. That is the intent here.
It’s important, provincial laws of general application, like health and safety and all of this, will still apply. The most specific example is the one we’re talking about today, the impact assessment, to make sure there’s one impact assessment done and not the equivalent provincial process done at the same time. There will be one process and then if provinces are involved, it would be feeding into the federal impact assessment process. This is the intent here.
It doesn’t change the funding model for the project. What we have is a collaborative public-private partnership. There will be some private investment in the project, and there’s also going to be federal funding that will be provided to make the project a reality. That declaration does not change the funding model.
Senator Lewis: When we talk about the right-of-way, and you talked about housing close to the right-of-way, will that land for the housing be part of the expropriation process or will it be after the fact of the railroads built? Will that land not be expropriated and those landowners will have an opportunity to participate in that housing?
Mr. Robitaille: Under the requirement of the Expropriation Act, expropriation will be used for land required for the project, for the railway. There will be additional opportunities for housing, but expropriation will not be used for that purpose.
Senator Quinn: I’d like to ask one of the legal representatives a couple of questions, please.
The Chair: Make sure you give us your name when you sit down.
Josée Thibodeau, General Counsel, Commercial Law Team, Transport and Infrastructure Legal Services, Department of Justice Canada: Good morning. My name is Josée Thibodeau, part of the Department of Justice.
Senator Quinn: My colleague referred to section 4 of the declaratory power. Last week, Transport Canada said that the use of declaratory power is to clarify that the high-speed rail line will be under federal jurisdiction, even where some segments to be constructed would be within one province.
Can you expand on what you mean by clarifying? What’s it clarifying?
Ms. Thibodeau: As I was explaining, interprovincial railways are already under the Constitution, under federal jurisdiction. Because here the project will be constructed in segments, and if one segment is only in one province, we wanted to clarify and remove any uncertainty or ambiguity that this would not be federal jurisdiction. The entire parts of the network, as a whole, will be under federal jurisdiction. That’s what we mean by clarifying.
Senator Quinn: By clarifying, another way of looking at that would be that you’re asking Parliament to unilaterally transfer provincial jurisdiction to the federal government?
Ms. Thibodeau: The federal jurisdiction would apply to all of the segments even if in one province. Our view is that it would be under federal jurisdiction anyway because it’s part of that entire network. But if someone takes the position that the segment in one province is under provincial jurisdiction, it declares that this part is also provincial jurisdiction.
Senator Quinn: Even though it’s in two provinces, in two segments, it’s going to fall under federal jurisdiction.
Ms. Thibodeau: Yes.
Senator Quinn: But doesn’t 92(10)(a) already provide for that?
Ms. Thibodeau: It provides it when it’s interprovincial. Again, for absolute clarity and confirming it, we are using the declaration to make sure that there’s no ambiguity by any party about that.
Senator Quinn: For absolute certainty because of segments of the project, you’re saying 92(10)(b) is essential even though 92(10)(a) is there, and it’s a railway that goes from one province through to another province.
Ms. Thibodeau: Exactly. One of the segments will operate on a silo.
Senator Quinn: Does that also help with the whole concept of consultations and all of the environmental impacts and things of that nature? So the federal government takes lead for that aspect? Or does each province do its own consultations and own impacts? Or does the declaratory power cause it to be a single window?
Ms. Thibodeau: As I was explaining, the objective is for the Impact Assessment Act to apply and one environmental assessment for the entire network. It will be done, as Ms. Johnson mentioned, in segments. Yes, the federal government will be leading in that process.
Senator Quinn: So it provides that single window for such a major project. This is a transportation corridor, one could say?
Ms. Thibodeau: You’re referring to the Major Projects Office?
Senator Quinn: I’m referring to the project being a big project. Let me rephrase. It’s a big project. It’s interprovincial. Being done in segments, even though 92(10)(a) there for certainty, we’re using the declaratory power. And that’s essential to facilitate that which the government wants to do?
Ms. Thibodeau: Yes.
Senator Quinn: What consultations have taken place? I think I heard you say that’s to come. There may be some that may have happened. For example, are Ontario and Quebec fine with giving up their jurisdiction to the federal government? Are landowners aware and have they been consulted? Have they been advised what’s going to happen as we go to the right? How does all that work with respect to getting agreement from folks as you get into this? Has any discussion taken place? Have people have said, “Yes, this is all good”? Have the provincial governments said, “Yes, we’ll give up our jurisdiction”?
Mr. Robitaille: We have been under active conversations with the provinces for the last two years. Actually, their participation in the impact assessment process has been —
Senator Quinn: Because of timeliness. I understand you said last week there were active discussions. I want to know, have they officially agreed? Have they said, “Yes, we’re on board”? Have their legislatures and assemblies said, “Yes, unanimous consent, we’re with you guys”?
Mr. Robitaille: At that point, the high-speed rail network act had not been introduced. To respect Parliament we did not speak to the details of that act. We will be engaging them on those details.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I’d like to understand what connection there will be between the Government of Quebec, its agency and the environmental studies. Are you saying that Quebec could participate in these studies?
For example, if a wetland or another significant discovery is made along the rail line in Quebec, is the federal government going to take charge of it all, or do you intend to involve Quebec’s environmental authorities? Sorry for insisting on this point again.
Mr. Robitaille: That’s going to be discussed in more detail with the provinces. For certain issues, the impact assessment system allows the participation of different stakeholders. We talked about the Canada Transport Agency; it can participate. The provinces can also participate in things that generally come within their purview.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Has that happened before? Quebec generally likes to do its own thing rather than be a stakeholder.
Mr. Robitaille: I’ll hand the floor over to Ms. Johnson, who can discuss other experiences with the provinces in more detail.
Ms. Johnson: When we’re talking about an impact assessment, the project is still in its early stages. There’s a planning phase, followed by an assessment with the proponent and the agency’s internal assessment. This is the pre-planning stage. It’s still too soon to talk about provincial involvement. However, the provinces will definitely be contacted. I’m not in a position at this time to explain how that will occur for this project.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Historically, have the provinces ever been included in a federal assessment by telling them to come and see us if they have something to say?
Ms. Johnson: We work with them, yes. Historically, there has never been a project of this magnitude. I don’t have any examples to give.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: If you work with 50-kilometre segments, that would add up to about 20 impact studies. You seem to disagree. Perhaps I’ve miscalculated; you can correct me. That would add up to a number of impact studies. How are you going to measure the potential cumulative impacts along this rail line?
Ms. Johnson: I don’t think the intention is to work with 50-kilometre segments, but I’ll let my colleagues answer that question. In all, we anticipated a handful of assessments. In each case, the segments would be fairly large.
It will be done in stages. The first segment will definitely include a look at the cumulative impacts. That’s required under the Impact Assessment Act. That includes project impacts and the anticipated impacts of other things. We know that there will be other segments. Even though the process starts with an initial segment, which I’m sure will be far more than 50 kilometres, it will cover the full scope of the project.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I apologize for my mistake. Thank you for correcting that.
Do you have an idea of what obstacles might arise? I’m thinking of wetlands, because they’re always extremely complex. We’ve had cases in Quebec that dragged on for years. Have you ever done any tracking to see what kinds of problems could arise?
Ms. Johnson: Once again, it’s really far too early in the process to speak of launching an impact assessment. We don’t have enough information to know what could happen or the specific impacts.
With a rail project of this magnitude, we expect that fish and their habitat will be impacted if the line crosses waterways, and that migratory birds and species at risk will be impacted by noise and vibration. Indigenous communities could also be impacted.
I can’t go into more detail. It’s too early in the formal assessment process.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Concerning farmland, because that’s mostly what you’re going to find outside the cities, do you anticipate any environmental impacts? Are there things that you —
Ms. Johnson: It’s too early in the process for me to offer an opinion on specific impacts anywhere along the route.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Mr. Robitaille, have you received any feedback from the Government of Quebec suggesting that this process could cause it a jurisdictional problem?
Mr. Robitaille: At this point, our collaboration with the Government of Quebec at regular meetings is going well, both directly with Alto and between the Government of Canada and the Government of Quebec. I don’t presume to speak for them, but at this point, our relations are everything we could have hoped for.
[English]
Senator Simons: Mr. Robitaille, we enjoyed you so much last week that we are having you back today. I have a question for you and Mr. Imbleau to start. Years ago, I covered municipal politics for the Edmonton Journal, and I wrote often about the challenges that Edmonton had with its public-private partnership, or P3, LRT project. The city lost control to a certain extent by having a P3, and then when there were deficiencies and delays the city had few levers with which to get money back or to incentivize the company to finish its work to the proper standard.
Could you explain to us how this P3 will work and what guarantees the government has put in place to ensure that the work is finished on time and on schedule, and if it isn’t, are there holdbacks? What levers has the government reserved for itself to ensure that the work gets done and done appropriately?
Mr. Imbleau: Thanks for the question. We call this a P3, but I prefer the blended finance approach. The asset is really developed by Canada and remains the property of Canada, but we need the private sector for their innovation and their way of managing big projects. We’re basically associating ourselves with the private sector, but they don’t actually own the asset. It’s different from a P3.
Senator Simons: It’s not a P3 in the sense of its conventional use.
Mr. Imbleau: I prefer the blended because they are a bit more aligned. We want them to have skin in the game. The next contractual phase with our private partner, Cadence, will be to align the price and how we mitigate the risk and share some pain and gain. That will be the next phase of the contractual negotiations. We’re still in the development phase, but the intent is to learn from those experiences here and abroad — in the U.K. and California — to avoid repeating some of the mistakes. My corporation does not operate anything. I’m there only to manage the project. It was the decision of Canada to put that in place a couple of years ago.
Senator Simons: Just as Edmontonians felt pain — I don’t know the situation in Ottawa as well — I think people in Ottawa have some concerns about the way their LRT project has come along for the same sorts of reasons. There will be mechanisms to ensure on-time performance, not just that the trains run on time but the trains are built on time?
Mr. Imbleau: Construction and operation. The incentives will be on the construction, the timing, the budget and the scope, but there will also be incentives on the operational aspect to align interests as much as possible.
Senator Simons: Ms. Jenkyn, when we were talking about expropriation, I think with Mr. Robitaille last week, we were talking primarily about farmland because that’s the bulk of the land you will be buying. Obviously, you will need urban stations. Have decisions been made yet about whether the stations will be where current VIA stations are or if the stations will be brand new? If so, what kind of urban land assembly will you need for urban stations?
Ms. Jenkyn: I will default to my colleagues as well at Transport Canada and Alto. Right now, we are in the early stages, as has been mentioned, so there is no approved corridor at this point in terms of the impact and what we’re looking at in terms of expropriation. Once we have that and understand the corridor, where it passes through, the lands that have to be expropriated, we will ensure that we consider any of the urban components and where those stations are and where we can alleviate expropriating lands that aren’t necessary.
As always with the Expropriation Act and with the new regime that introduces some more streamlined measures, the objectives are always to ensure that we are disrupting to the least possible degree, only acquiring what is necessary and can pass through areas where there is existing infrastructure that we can continue to use.
I will defer to my colleagues for any —
Senator Simons: I should ask: Once the trains arrive in cities that have existing rail infrastructure, can they go onto conventional tracks, or do you need to build an entirely — if you are coming into Toronto, where there are GO Trains, Union Station and the train from the airport, do you need a completely separate place, or can they share infrastructure at all?
Mr. Imbleau: The intent would be to be as independent as possible. That means running on dedicated tracks, especially in rural areas. In city centres, in Montreal and downtown Toronto, we might need some collaboration by the host railway, including Metrolinx and others, but the intent to be as independent and reliable as possible.
At this point in time, we’re about to present a corridor to the population. A corridor will be fairly large in rural areas and farmers’ lands, a bit narrower in suburban areas and then it might be more specific in city centres because options are fewer. That’s the phase we will start sometime in 2026 to get the feedback of everyone and then to think about the precise locations of the alignment, which will be established later on in 2026.
[Translation]
Senator Aucoin: I want to thank the witnesses for joining us today.
My first question relates to what Mr. Imbleau just said about cities.
This is quite a significant infrastructure for cities. If you want to be independent, to have rail and the whole system, it can involve a lot of work with cities and provinces. What guarantee do we have that the system will run smoothly, without getting bogged down, or that it will start on schedule?
Mr. Imbleau: Thank you for the question.
Having done this all my life, I know that building linear infrastructure is always a challenge. In urban centres, it’s even more complicated. Rights-of-way and the obstacles that come with construction need to be minimized.
That said, construction methods and innovation also play a role. Look at how the Caisse managed to get Montreal’s REM built with very limited impacts. Aerial and underground options will be considered to reach downtown areas. Municipal collaboration is definitely essential. Collaboration and consultations with municipal governments have already started. We consider these authorities to be full partners not only in effectively locating impacts, but in minimizing them during construction as well.
Senator Aucoin: If ever the project were delayed for technical or other reasons, how might costs be affected if construction doesn’t start on time?
Mr. Imbleau: The schedule is directly related to the cost evaluation. According to estimates, every year that goes by with no trains in service adds several billion dollars to the project’s cost. If construction can start in a four- to five-year time frame and finish on time, it minimizes the risk for Canadian taxpayers, because every year represents an additional cost of about $2 billion to $3 billion. That’s a powerful incentive.
My incentive is the private player, Cadence, our partner. We’re going to establish good contract provisions to create an alignment of interests that ensures compliance not only with the project’s design, but also with its schedule.
Senator Aucoin: We talked about expropriation. Obviously, this is a very important issue. Have you held any talks on this matter with the cities, for example? Are the proposed steps accepted by or acceptable to the cities and municipalities? Have you made progress on that yet?
Mr. Imbleau: The consultation schedule will get under way in earnest toward the end of January. That’s when the corridor that I described earlier will be presented, along with differences between rural, suburban and municipal areas.
In the very near future, once the schedule is published, we will sit down with all elected officials along the corridor and present the consultation timeline to them. At high levels, the interest is there, but I haven’t had a chance yet to present the specific consultation timeline. At least two consultation phases will take place, not just one. The first consultation phase will focus on a relatively broad corridor, to gather opinions, reposition the corridor and move things around in response to their requests, objections or recommendations. After that, we’ll present what’s called a well-defined route, and then the procurement process will start.
Senator Aucoin: Mr. Robitaille, I understand about the coming evaluations and pre-emptive rights. I’d like to hear another explanation concerning the expropriation process and what happens if people are upset about it or object to it. What steps are available to them?
Mr. Robitaille: The act provides a process whereby owners can submit their objections in writing to the minister. Theses will be considered before expropriations are finalized.
[English]
Senator Arnold: I am trying to think through this from a political angle. We talked about the importance of transparency, fairness, openness and clarity. How do we maintain public trust and engagement on a project like this? Mr. Imbleau, I think you talked about all the important stakeholders, but you didn’t mention the public. What will the engagement look like on this? Senator Aucoin referred to NIMBYism, the notion of “not in my backyard.”
What is the plan? Have you studied other modern democracies that have built structures like this? What has that looked like?
Mr. Imbleau: Thanks for the questions.
I’m pleased to report that I was able to hire talent from all over the world, including the number one high-speed rail in Spain. She has moved over to my team, and she has done thousands of kilometres. She is bringing great expertise. She is in my team, and it is the same thing for others on my team.
I have personally done many linear projects, and there is a recipe: It is about transparency, being out and listening and adapting. That’s the intent.
In the first phase of the consultation, there will be a bit frustration because we will go out and engage on a fairly large corridor, and people will say, “Well, you don’t know exactly where you are going.” That’s exactly right, because we need to have input from people in Trois-Rivières and Peterborough, et cetera. Then, we will sit down with the experts and define the alignment, and we will do a second round of consultation on the alignment. Then, the very specific land owners who are affected will be consulted at that point. A linear project generates social benefits but has some private implications. That will be the very sensitive part that will occur later in 2026 or 2027.
Senator Arnold: Very quickly: I didn’t hear anyone mention Windsor today. It is still on the table, correct?
Mr. Robitaille: The Minister of Transport has asked Alto to study potential options to improve passenger rail services west of Toronto. Right now, the project is from Toronto to Quebec City, but, in parallel, Alto is working with Cadence to present options and proposals for improvement that could include high-speed rail options to London and Windsor. Based on that information, the government will be equipped to consider the potential to improve the service, and it is going to be included in the decision making as the project proceeds.
Senator Arnold: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Cormier: I want to thank the witnesses for being with us today.
Mr. Imbleau, I am pleased to hear that bilingualism will be included in all management and infrastructure.
Mr. Robitaille, you spoke of partners in the co-development process. You mentioned departments such as Public Services and Procurement Canada, Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada and Transport Canada. All of these departments have responsibilities under the Official Languages Act. We talked about that at the last meeting. They need to be able to measure the positive and negative impacts of their decisions.
The identified area includes a lot of small official language minority communities. Have you already considered or assessed the impact on these communities, or do you intend to do so, in relation to matters such as expropriation, housing or infrastructure? In other words, will francophone communities along the route between Montreal and Toronto be affected? More importantly, given the Government of Canada’s responsibilities, do you intend to measure the corridor’s impact on these official language minority communities in the event of expropriation or any other challenge?
Mr. Robitaille: At a high level, when it comes to defining a route and ultimately getting the Government of Canada to accept the route based on the work of Cadence and Alto, I would say that all factors must be addressed in a multidisciplinary analysis. I wouldn’t say that particular attention will necessarily focus on official language minority communities, but that it’s important to choose the best route or the best compromise possible, considering the project’s overall impacts.
Senator Cormier: That’s why I’m asking you the question. All too often, projects fail to consider how measures and their impact affect these communities. You now have a great, interesting and important project. We need to ensure that the growth and vitality of official language minority communities along the route aren’t unduly penalized. That’s a federal responsibility. So I’d like to know whether you intend to do that, because it’s an important consideration, whether in terms of expropriations or in other regards.
Mr. Imbleau, perhaps?
Mr. Imbleau: I’d say that the impact on every community will have to be identified. My intuition tells me that identifying the impact on more specific communities, such as Franco-Ontarians, for example, doesn’t involve any added level of difficulty. We are pleased to ensure accountability. I think the impact will be positive. In case of a negative impact, however, that accountability can be included in our due diligence at the appropriate time, both for construction and operations.
Senator Cormier: Thank you very much.
[English]
The Chair: We have about four minutes left. I would like to ask Senator Dasko to ask another question, and if we have time, our other leader, Senator Lewis, will ask one as well. We have about five minutes between the two of you.
Senator Dasko: Thank you. I want to get back to the question about Union Station. Do I understand that it will or will not go to Union Station? Do you have a preference for whether it will or will not go into Union Station? Have you made any decisions? Just tell me.
Mr. Imbleau: I have a preference, but I’m not going to share it today. It is still a work-in-progress. The objective would be to have a station in the vicinity of Union Station. We are studying with Cadence what the options are. We are collaborating with Metrolinx to see what the impact is. We’re looking at options. It needs to be economical and reliable. We have different options, and we will try to resist committing to only one solution because that means more speculation, more cost to taxpayers, so we will keep the options open as long as possible. The intent in Toronto would be to be in the vicinity of Union if it is feasible and we can make it affordable.
Senator Dasko: You are not going out to the suburbs of Toronto to put a station there? That’s not an option there. No, it’s not that I happen to live in downtown Toronto. That has nothing to do with it.
Mr. Robitaille: The Government of Canada has requested that Alto have stations in the downtowns of the cities, including Toronto and Montreal. At this point, we want to let the experts do their work. We want the consultation to take place before any final decision is made, and this is what Mr. Imbleau was referring to. We’re not talking about the station that would be far in the suburbs or something like that.
Senator Dasko: You won’t be using VIA Rail tracks? Have you absolutely made that decision?
Mr. Imbleau: VIA does not own those rails. They rely on CN, CP and Metrolinx. It is one of the reliability concerns in the regions. They don’t own the tracks except those between Montreal and Ottawa where they do own part of the track. It is not the case in the Toronto region.
Senator Dasko: They don’t have that track in any case. Does that mean you may use that track, then?
Mr. Imbleau: We will have options to present at the proper time when we have done sufficient diligent work and consultation. It is too early to be that precise in Toronto.
Senator Lewis: Being from Saskatchewan, I am glad to hear that there is rail west of Toronto. That’s another issue.
We’re in the present now, but the existing rails in this country are over a century old. Has there been any thinking or future planning around the idea of new technology, twinning of the tracks or perhaps a freight option? Is the right-of-way, at this time, going to be big enough to accommodate some of the future growth that may happen?
Mr. Imbleau: In my previous life, I was in the port business, and I realized that economically we should never slow down freight trains. That’s why we need passenger rail to get out of the way and not to affect the economy.
Alto will need to run on dedicated tracks, and our tracks will be basically be incompatible with the freight train, but it will give them more space to run on the CP and the CN lines because we will not run on those assets. Passengers win and the economy wins.
Senator Lewis: Have you done any planning to make it large enough to accommodate freight or some kind of freight system? There are a number of freight systems that are being developed, large tubes and all those kinds of things. In California, for instance, they are looking at a high-speed freight network.
Mr. Robitaille: The mandate that the government gave to Alto is to build a new passenger rail system, so that does not include, for example, additional expropriation to accommodate freight rail. As Mr. Imbleau was saying, by having the new system and being independent, it is going to have a positive impact on the capacity of the CN and the CP networks, primarily the CN network, going from West to East.
Senator Lewis: I’m just saying when you do the right-of-way if you make it 75 instead of 50, it probably wouldn’t hurt for the future, because 100 or 200 years is a long time. This rail line will be there for a long time, and who knows what capacity will be necessary in the future.
The Chair: Thank you, senator. We have a special request from two senators. We have about five minutes. So we will give you each two and a half minutes.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I’ve been asked a very technical question by a number of people I’ve spoken with about this wonderful project. It is going to involve new land severances. I imagine that tractors won’t be permitted on the track, for reasons related to electricity and other factors. Have you calculated the maximum distance that this kind of machinery would have to travel to make a detour? You said, and I was struck by it, that high-speed trains require as few interruptions as possible. That makes sense. Are you going to calculate that? I can imagine it taking farmers an hour and a half every time they want to cross from one side to the other. It seems a bit much.
Mr. Robitaille: Work needs to be done on determining the exact location of the tracks. Minimizing the need to divide farmland in two is a very important objective. It’s very important that we look into the possibility of purchasing any property that’s severed or left landlocked. That work needs to be done.
The reality facing high-speed trains worldwide is that no same-level crossing of tracks is permitted, not by tractors or cars. At all intersections, one kind of traffic travels below and the other above, at significant cost.
Alto and Cadence will work to limit land severance situations to the extent possible, to spare people a lot of wasted time. In cases like these, we would have to look into purchasing residual land to avoid problems.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I’ll leave the rest of my time to my colleague.
[English]
Senator Quinn: I’d like to ask the lawyer a question again, if I may.
Back to the expropriation question, the language is saying “may be required” instead of “is required” because we don’t know the exact routing of that yet, but that is a bit of a suspension of civil rights for property owners in two provinces. What challenges might we expect to see in this area when they’re forbidden to build on the land that could be or might be expropriated? There must be some plans as to how to deal with this, so how do we deal with this?
Ms. Thibodeau: The extent of the expropriation is related to the railway project, and it is under federal jurisdiction. It’s possible for the federal government to expropriate for those reasons. Despite the impacts that it could have on the individual, the act provides for indemnification and compensation to these individuals as a result of that.
Senator Quinn: The corridor is not quite defined as of yet, but there must be a corridor in mind. There must be “plus or minus 5 kilometres” of where you think you may be going. Why have we not given notice to landowners that they might be affected by this? Certainly, if you live in different communities and something may happen, you get notice that you may be affected so you can be watching. What happens if some property owners decide to develop their land. For example, building structures, such as a new barn for cattle, and then they find out later that they weren’t supposed to do that? How do we deal with that?
Mr. Imbleau: Thank you for the question, senator. The consultation in the corridor is starting in January, so we’re reaching out to a fairly large region of landowners. They will give us that feedback at this point in time, and the alignment will be developed after receiving the initial feedback.
Senator Quinn: What’s the relationship between Via Rail and your organization? Are they a subsidiary? Whom do you report to?
Mr. Imbleau: I report to a board of directors and a chair of my board. We’re an affiliate of Via, but an independent board. I report to the board, which reports to the Minister of Transport.
Senator Quinn: So the profits or losses that are all within your corporation. What do you do for those segments that may operate in a province by itself as you develop the whole thing? You’re not waiting for the whole thing to be done, so what happens to the rail routes in Ontario, for example, that are high-volume moneymakers for Via Rail that they’re going to lose when a segment comes into operation? What happens to Via Rail?
Mr. Robitaille: The mandate the government has given to both Via Rail and Alto is for the eventual system to include both the high-speed railroad and the existing services in the communities, including the ones that go all the way to Windsor. Effectively, as of a date to be determined in the future, all of this will be consolidated, because we don’t want a system run by Via Rail to compete against a new high-speed system. What we want is a comprehensive service offering for the benefit of all people in the area.
Senator Quinn: Thank you for coming to Eastern Canada, which is to say the Maritimes.
The Chair: We’ve now come to the end of our first panel. We would like to thank you all for your contribution today. It has been very enlightening and was packed full of information. I’m sure we’ll have over meetings with you.
If there’s anything that any of you would like to respond to in writing that was asked in terms of questions, please get in any written responses by December 23, 2025. Maybe Santa Claus will be with you.
[Translation]
I would now like to introduce our next panel.
[English]
We have with us Professor Ahmed El-Geneidy, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Public Transport Planning and Operation and Professor of Transport at the School of Urban Planning, McGill University; Dr. Lavagnon Ika, Professor of Project Management at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa; and Dr. Anneke Smit, Associate Professor, Director, Centre for Cities, University of Windsor. Thank you all for joining us today.
Witnesses will provide opening remarks of approximately five minutes each to be followed by a question-and-answer session with the senators. I will now invite Professor El-Geneidy to give his opening remarks.
Ahmed El-Geneidy, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, Public Transport Planning and Operation and Professor of Transport, School of Urban Planning, McGill University, as an individual: Thank you for having me speak to your committee today. I wanted to reiterate how high-speed rail, or HSR, in Canada will generate long-term economic and societal benefits, a view shared by over 90% of our 6,700 survey respondents who answered our survey in October 2025.
One in three respondents said they would take the high-speed rail at least once a year, representing an estimated ridership of 8.8 million annual passengers. Yet, these benefits cannot be hindered by a lack of careful planning. In my testimony, I’ll highlight five priority areas critical to ensure the success of the HSR in Canada.
The first one is land acquisition, which has been discussed today. The greatest risk of delay comes from securing the right-of-way. We have seen this problem in the California high-speed rail where land acquisition has delayed the project and increased its costs. This is a major concern for over 75% of our survey participants residing along the corridor. My recommendation for that is to grant Alto the authority, which I heard earlier that they will be working to provide regular regional services along the same right-of-way when the HSR is not in operation. This will provide tangible benefits to all communities along the right-of-way and strengthens Alto’s position when negotiating for land to secure the right-of-way.
The second is to prioritize the purchase of less-used or abandoned rail infrastructure along the corridor. This will streamline negotiations for land acquisition and reduce displacements.
The third point is about station selection and location. The current proposed stations reflect the past high-frequency rail proposal or political influences and may not be optimal for the high-speed network performance, for example, the Laval station.
Alto must be commissioned to conduct a rigorous multiple account cost-benefit analysis to identify station locations and right-of-way corridors that maximize overall value and minimize the cost, free from political or inherited interferences to maximize the societal benefits of the HSR project.
Infrastructure safety is a major concern. When I listened to previous testimony from Transport Canada, I felt I wanted to raise this because Florida’s high-speed rail experience has seen more than 180 people killed since it started in 2017 because they did it all at grade. That design is a concern for me. In the recommendation, I say high-speed rail must be fully grade separated or elevated. Transport Canada must adopt the high-speed rail-specific safety standards modelled on proven systems like the Shinkansen in Japan where there have been no deaths since the 1960s.
The competitiveness of the service is critical. To compete with air travel, the travel time between Montreal and Toronto must be less than three hours. An express service might be explored between the two regions running that system. Also, consider stations near airports with strong transit connections to downtown, as this will attract high-value business and tourism passengers. Our survey confirms passengers prefer stations near major transit hubs and not specifically in the downtown area, which gets me to the last point, which I feel is most important, which is financing.
A traditional public-private partnership structure would require large and long-term subsidies as public transit will not pay for capital and operating costs from fare revenues. Alto must be allowed to pursue land value capture and development partnerships around stations, similar to some Asian rail projects or Australian planned high-speed rail.
Land value capture could generate real estate development gains equivalent to roughly 15% of the total cost of the project, which I expect to be around $12 billion in savings. That effectively cuts the required per-passenger subsidy and helps increase the system use, with the system earning revenues around 42 years.
In conclusion, a successful Canadian high-speed rail system depends on granting Alto the authority to control land, develop property, and optimize the alignment and station locations based on evidence. This ensures that Canada will be building a high-speed rail system that is competitive, safe and financially durable.
At the same time, Transport Canada’s oversight is essential for this development to hold Alto accountable and ensure the delivery of the project on time and within budget, which were major concerns raised by our survey respondents. More than 70% were concerned about being over budget and over time. Thank you so much for listening.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Professor El-Geneidy. I will now invite Dr. Ika to give his opening remarks.
Lavagnon Ika, Professor of Project Management, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, as an individual: Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I’m a professor of project management. My research focuses, among other things, on why major infrastructure projects around the world experience cost overruns and benefit shortfalls. This project is a transformational national interest project. The bill grants significant powers to Alto and to cabinet with a stated aim of reducing regulatory friction and accelerating delivery.
A couple of elements are notable, but I won’t go through them. They were presented earlier.
Why this bill, in my understanding? Simply put, the government wants to keep control to accelerate a complex project that would otherwise take many years to complete. Major projects, as you know, encounter extensive approval processes, including environmental assessments, for instance, and this creates what I call fuzzy projects characterized by evolving goals and conflicting stakeholder expectations. These timelines illustrate the concern.
If you consider, for instance, the Champlain Bridge as an example, it required seven to eight years from decision to full opening. This is typical of infrastructure of that scale.
It is, therefore, understandable that government wants to reduce the decision-to-delivery timeline for Alto from roughly eight years to something closer to five. The intent is to deliver economic and mobility benefits sooner, particularly in a challenging geopolitical environment.
The U.K. High Speed Two, or HS2, project provides a cautionary counterpoint. Despite immense effort, including building a £100 million, 1-kilometre bat tunnel, the project became emblematic of unsustainable cost escalation, ultimately leading to its cancellation, partly. This underscores the need to balance ambition, environmental stewardship and value for money.
Quickly, why segmentation into 50-kilometre segments? These segments appear, in my view, to be a governance innovation that seeks to balance authority with inclusion. Authority in the sense that government would like to retain strategic control and reduce the risk of full project paralysis. Inclusion in the sense that communities and stakeholders retain the ability to shape individual segments. This structure acknowledges the need for regulatory oversight while avoiding the bottlenecks associated with comprehensive, upfront review. It is also a response to what I call the megaproject legitimacy dilemma. What does that mean? It means simply that major projects require government to decide with authority to deliver national infrastructure. At the same time, they require broad-based legitimacy because they affect local communities, Indigenous rights and environmental assets. Here lies the dilemma. Too much governmental control undermines legitimacy and social acceptance. Too little control undermines feasibility and project delivery.
Governments claiming to act in the public interest face stakeholders whose interests are broader, sometimes contradictory and deeply local, as the session showed a couple of minutes ago. Delivering a project of national importance thus requires balancing competing claims to legitimacy.
Could the bill backfire? Yes. The concentration of authority and the pre-approval mechanisms may reduce transparency and weaken, to some extent, independent oversight. This could provoke legal challenges, social opposition, perhaps, and delays, the very issues that the bill seeks to avoid.
As I noted in a recent interview, these powers are sweeping and may trigger backlash from landowners and Indigenous groups.
To conclude, where to go from here? The government needs a delicate dance — a choreography — because successful megaproject delivery requires government to carefully orchestrate authority and inclusion, as I said before. What they need to do is a delicate dance that turns legitimacy dilemma into a governance capability rather than a governance failure.
In conclusion, I would say that speed matters, but fast track at any cost risks undermining legitimacy, environmental protection, Indigenous rights and long-term project value. As La Fontaine reminds us —
[Translation]
“Slow and steady wins the race.”
[English]
Slow and steady, supported by sound governance, often wins the race.
[Translation]
Thank you very much. I’m pleased to answer your questions.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Ika. I will now invite Dr. Smit to give her opening remarks.
Anneke Smit, Associate Professor, Director, Centre for Cities, University of Windsor, as an individual: Good morning, senators. It’s a pleasure to address you today on the question of high-speed rail included in the budget implementation act, 2025.
[Translation]
Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today.
[English]
I am Director of the Centre for Cities, at the University of Windsor in the Faculty of Law and Associate Professor in that faculty.
I have lived in Windsor, in the traditional territory of the Three Fires Confederacy, for most of the last 18 years. I travel regularly lately to Ottawa, Montreal or Toronto for work. Yesterday, like many other days, I spent 12 hours on the train to be here with you today. I wanted to be here in person, but this is what it takes. I love the simplicity of rail travel and the environmental impacts and it’s the right decision to move forward. I do deeply regret that the rail plan at the moment will not be extending to Windsor. There are significant cross-border rail investments being made at this moment that are generational in impact. I understand it is a difficult time for Canada-U.S. relations, but I think it is an oversight not to be extending the rail, at this point, to Windsor. With that said, let me be clear that I am strongly in favour of the plan as it is moving forward between Quebec City and Toronto and agree that it should be fast-tracked. I do, however, have several concerns about the proposed expropriation provisions of the bill.
I have engaged with expropriation law and land regulation in Canada and elsewhere over many years as a researcher and also as a practice focus researcher. And it is through these lenses that I make four brief comments.
First, beyond the original colonial conquest of Canada, expropriation is the most blunt instrument of governmental control over land known in Canada’s systems of land ownership and it must be treated with care.
These have included some very high-profile and large-scale takings in Canada’s modern history — the Spadina Expressway in Toronto in the ’60s, the Pickering Airport lands in the ’70s, the National Capital Commission’s LeBreton Flats in the ’60s, the destruction of downtown neighbourhoods across Canada and North America in the name of urban renewal.
These expropriations destroyed neighbourhoods, communities and ways of life for public purposes that often did not come to fruition. These are cautionary tales for all of us. These large-scale takings now are happening at a time of high growth and ambitious governmental infrastructure development and in this sense, we need to harken back to those examples.
By public reports, the land acquisition for the proposed high-speed rail between Quebec City and Toronto will be one of the largest expropriations in our country’s history. Expropriation can be an effective tool, but history tells us sometimes these planned projects will fail.
Second, the proposed process risks losing transparency and due process. Unlike most other constitutional states, Canada does not have a constitutional protection for private property, meaning the whole expropriation regime sits outside the constitutional framework governed by legislation instead, such as the federal Expropriation Act enacted approximately 50 years ago.
However, as the Supreme Court of Canada told us in its 1997 Decision in Toronto Area Transit Operating Authority v. Dell Holdings Ltd.
To take all or part of a person’s property constitutes a severe loss and a very significant interference with a citizen’s private property rights. It follows that the power of an expropriating authority should be strictly construed in favour of those whose rights have been affected.
While limited, existing hearing processes provided for in the federal Expropriation Act, which the bill proposes to remove, are an opportunity to shed light on and sometimes correct proposed expropriations, and this scrutiny may make the project stronger in the long run.
The adage of “think slow, act fast” applies here. Land acquisition needs time and good and transparent process. This will pay off and allow it to move more quickly in the long run as my colleague, Dr. Ika, has also suggested.
Third, the proposed process may have unintended detrimental consequences for landowners even if they ultimately are never expropriated. The Right of First Refusal registered on the property for eight years and proposed prohibition on improvements for four years, will impact land values and landowners’ abilities to sell and to improve their properties. It is, in my view, too early to put these restrictions on properties even as the consultation begins, as we have heard, in the new year until there is more clarity about the route, and more clarity over the types of properties and whether all or part of the properties will be needed as has been discussed this morning.
Finally, landowners deserve to be meaningfully engaged in this generational federal investment. On its own website, Alto states:
Being recognized as a transformative project does not mean taking shortcuts. Far from that. Alto will continue to follow all due processes with care and integrity.
Meaningful consultation is mentioned as one part of the due process. Certainly, we’ve heard about that this morning. Landowners are community members. They are being asked to make a significant sacrifice in the name of the public interest. They deserve to be engaged with well before a notice of expropriation arrives in the mail — and I think we’ve heard this morning that is the intention — and they deserve to be engaged with throughout the process. Meaningful engagement may include negotiation for sale, even if not required by the legislation, overcompensation that is above the minimum required or the market value, creative solutions such as land swaps, which allow them to maintain their livelihoods and their communities, support for land owners to find a comparable property et cetera. There are examples out there in other countries and examples that have been used in Canada.
In conclusion, I strongly support the prioritization of high-speed rail in Canada and the use of expropriation as a necessary tool for land acquisition. However, I urge the Government of Canada to proceed carefully with its partners on the acquisition of private properties, even in the face of a valid, overdue and potentially transformative public transportation investment.
Thank you. Meegwetch.
The Chair: We have seven senators asking questions and we have 30 minutes, so I would ask that each of you speak succinctly and clearly and you will have four minutes each.
Senator Dasko: Thank you very much to the witnesses for really interesting and valuable presentations. Both Professor Ika and Professor Smit talked about the perils of these projects and how they can go off the rails, so to speak. Especially your example, of the Spadina Expressway. I think about the Pickering Airport and the expropriation done there and how long that took to resolve and all of the disruption. I’m going to ask a question to Professor Ika.
Your binary processes, authority versus inclusion. You’ve warned us of the excess on one side or the other. The example of BritRail, I find very, very interesting. Was that an excess of authority or was that an excess of inclusion or something else? What killed it in what made it into the disaster that it is? Can we learn anything from that particular example, since it was a rail line?
Mr. Ika: Thank you for a great question. I would err on the side of excess inclusion because we’re trying to include as much as possible stakeholders and hear their voices. Considering the testimony, when you do that is great because you’re getting the voices of the stakeholders and you want to make sure that you have the bottom line of a project. You want the project to create public value. That’s noble as an intent. The thing is that it takes time, and time comes with cost. With cost, you have cost overruns, so that’s a challenge.
Senator Dasko: In the British example, what actually happened there? Was it excessive inclusion? Is that —
Mr. Ika: Yes, that’s my stance. The example that I gave was about £100 million for a one kilometre bat tunnel that they were trying to build to protect the project against any sort of environmental impact. An inquiry into the department’s handling of that project revealed that the effort to reduce environmental impact of the HS2 did not deliver value for money. That’s what I’m talking about, and I am quoting them.
Senator Dasko: Professor Smit, do you have anything to add on that topic?
Ms. Smit: Not on that specific question.
Senator Dasko: My question is to Professor El-Geneidy. We had a discussion here at committee last week about the profitability of this service. Profitability partly depends on the prices that can be charged to consumers. I wonder if you could comment on the pricing structure that they have in place or that they are contemplating for this service. Are customers expected to pay high prices for this, and will they do so? How are they proceeding with respect to consideration of the pricing mechanism, which, of course, is related to profitability?
Mr. El-Geneidy: Thank you for the question. What Alto has announced did not make it clear what the pricing will be. We did a survey and asked people about their willingness to pay. We asked: How much are you willing to pay if this service is present today to get from Toronto to Montreal and from the different stations? People were willing to pay only $20 above prices for VIA’s service today. I did an estimation about how much revenue that would lead to, and I found that in 50 years, with the public-private partnership, it won’t make back the money for the capital or operations for the private partner.
That’s why I have been recommending that we look at other sources of funding besides the tickets, which is the land-value capture where you take the land around the station and you develop it. Then, when you are developing a regular service around other stations, for example, in Cornwall, where it is not planned and high-speed is irregular, you also take that land and develop one or two kilometres around the station. Then, you can expect 15% of gain on the land. The land will increase around 15% because of you are putting the rail there. This is where that project will start to make sense from a financial standpoint. That’s in year 40 or 44.
Senator Dasko: The revenues then come from the property around the rail line and around the stations, and that is part of the profitability formula. Is that what you are saying?
Mr. El-Geneidy: Yes. Alto would buy one or two kilometres around the stations and develop this land or partner with developers to develop the land. The government will need to change their plans. They are supposed to be building high-speed rail only, but they have to go into partnership to develop around the stations to make it profitable at the end and to give back the money. The subsidy will then be reduced. We think the subsidy will be around $140 if we don’t do that. If we do that, it is around $70 per subsidy. It will always be subsidized, but it is —
Senator Dasko: Very helpful. Thank you.
Senator Lewis: I’m following on the same line of questioning. You talked about competition with air travel. High-speed rail has to be competitive as far as timing goes but for cost as well. It won’t be $20 a ticket above air. If we are going to compete with airlines, there seems, to me, anyway, to be more room to charge more than $20 above the current rail system.
Mr. El-Geneidy: You can, but you have to think about people’s willingness to pay. If the system is available to move for them, they said they did not value it that much. We tried to put, in the system, double the amount for first class or business class, so this will pay even double the amount. For people to use the system, it has to be less than three hours to get from Montreal to Toronto to get the demand.
Senator Lewis: When you speak about the land use and expropriating other lands around the stations, do you adjust the compensation for those land owners if it is going to a housing development and so on? Will they be compensated for more than just selling agricultural land?
Mr. El-Geneidy: I’m not an expert on the pricing exactly, so I can’t comment on that. What I know is that once you put money on the ground, the land value is going to go up. Someone has to capture this, and this is what they have been doing in Asia for most of the regular rail, not the high-speed rail. Australians are planning the high-speed rail with land value capture as well.
Senator Lewis: Very good. Thank you.
Senator Simons: Thank you very much. Professor El-Geneidy, you said it is important that we not place the stations for political reasons as opposed to practical ones. For example, my good friend Senator Dasko would love the station to be at Union Station, but from what you were saying, might it make more sense to put the Toronto station near Pearson, and then people could get to Union Station on the shuttle train that runs between? Is that the kind of thing that you had in mind? Putting stations near transportation nodes rather than in congested and expensive downtowns might make more sense.
Mr. El-Geneidy: When we asked people about what their preference is, there was no preference for downtown versus near a public transport hub. Going out a little bit into the suburbs, near Pearson or somewhere in the first ring of suburbs or having stations near Pearson and in the first ring of the suburbs, will enable us to buy land around the station, and then do the land-value capture. If you go into Union or if you go into Gare Centrale de Montreal, you will not make any dent in the land value, and you will not be able to capture that much from the land value because the area is already overbuilt. You need to be in an area where it is empty or where there is industrial land that you can buy at a lower price and then you develop housing around it and develop transit-oriented developments so that you have a return on investment of around 15% of the money you are putting in the rail itself.
Senator Simons: That’s really interesting.
To our guests who are in the room, Professor Smit and Professor Ika, I think a lot of Canadians have been frustrated at seeing major transportation infrastructure projects — I’m thinking of LRT — have huge delays and huge cost overruns. What is it about the way we manage these projects? Do we lowball the tenders in the first place? Do we have an artificially optimistic view of how much things are going to cost and how long they are going to take and then we’re disappointed? Or is there something about the way we manage projects that is leading to these disappointments?
Ms. Smit: I’m happy to answer quickly, and then I’m sure Professor Ika will want to speak about project management.
These are incredibly complex approaches. These are incredibly complex projects that we are seeking to undertake to make massive change for our communities. These are supposed to be connective. They are supposed to allow our communities to thrive better. They are supposed to encourage investment in regions that haven’t had it. They are supposed to be able to move people economically across space, and then we talk about putting things on the outskirts instead of downtown or that we’ll just have to build some housing around it. Each one of these things is a piece of the siloing of federal and municipal responsibilities.
We oversimplify when we make the announcements, and we think we’re not a complex country. We are. We think we’re not a federal government that cares about all of these things or that it will fall into place, and the truth is that it won’t. We have a climate crisis. We have a housing crisis. We are facing untold levels of, sort of, checking out and people not wanting to make those kinds of shifts in terms of a transportation mode. These are all really complicated things that have to be dealt with, and I think we underestimate what all of those will be when we start.
Mr. Ika: I would like to add to that. I agree with my colleague that these projects are very complex. That’s the reason why I call them “fuzzy projects.” But the issue is that we make politically premature announcements on these projects — so that’s the first issue — and we make these announcements without doing our homework when it comes to the estimates of how much it will cost and how long it will take. Without having information from feasibility studies, for instance, then we commit publicly to time and budget. That is what is happening in the case of the LRT project. The mayor early kind of committed to the budget, the $2 billion envelope for the project. That’s an issue.
The second issue is that the City lacks the capacity to supervise these unprecedented projects. I won’t say that the same thing is going to happen here. Clearly, the Alto project is an unprecedented project. And the rest is that we tend to make mistakes.
Senator Simons: That’s very — [Technical difficulties] who has got, like, the magic answer to make this happen.
Mr. Ika: Yes, there is no magic answer. These projects, like my colleague suggested, are fraught with complexity and uncertainty. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Stakeholders may be for the project today and change their mind tomorrow. That makes it very complex to come up with an estimate of the time it is going to take and the cost it is going to take. We are kind of managing uncertainty here, and we don’t do well when it comes to learning from the past.
Senator Simons: Thank you very much.
Senator Quinn: Thank you, witnesses. Thank you, Dr. Ika, for your presentation. I was really intrigued with it, particularly the part where you spoke about how the current approach has given government and Alto significant power. You may have heard questions from the previous panel, and there has been a touching of base with provincial governments, but there has been no agreement from provincial governments, no agreement from stakeholders, no agreement from First Nations folks. So the declaratory power that is being invoked is going to be passed in the budget implementation act, or BIA, and when that BIA is passed, that power is with the federal government.
Do you foresee that there will be significant issues, small issues, big issues, with respect to the provinces having their jurisdictions removed and with property owners and all of the things that you talk about — can we expect to see delays? That’s question one.
Mr. Ika: I’m not clear on what will happen, but what is for sure is that some stakeholders out there will not be happy about the move. That is for sure. They will complain about it and act and behave on — you know, being unhappy about it. Therefore, it may take time to settle this kind of situation where stakeholders are unhappy about the bill or the project as a whole.
I can’t tell who is going to be that stakeholder that is going to be unhappy, so I don’t have the magic wand to be able to call it.
Senator Quinn: It may be a province.
Mr. Ika: Maybe a province. It is possible.
Ms. Smit: I agree. We talk about the community as a monolith as if we do community engagement and that means that we have got it. You have heard from our colleagues earlier — and I fully trust that they have the experience that they say that they have — but every one of the things that they mentioned could be months or years of delay just based on the experience that I think all of us on this panel have, of what we have studied, that is. It is clear that those things will happen. As my colleague said, we don’t know which one it will be, whether that will be landowners, the province or municipalities. We haven’t talked about municipalities here. That’s a very fraught space right now, and we haven’t talked about that at all. It is very likely.
Senator Quinn: A related question is if a big project is being done with existing infrastructure versus new infrastructure — this is new infrastructure we are talking about. But if there was existing infrastructure that had to be rehabilitated, for example, would the likelihood of success be stronger for something that already exists versus something that is brand new?
Mr. Ika: Yes.This is what happened with the Paris Olympic Games, recently, the last Olympic Games. They used the existing infrastructure to be able to reduce the whole cost of staging the games.
So, yes, if you are using existing infrastructure, then you will reduce the cost. But the issue here is that the passenger rail and the freight rail are using the same rails. That’s the very problem that the Alto project wants to solve. So they can’t use the existing infrastructure here.
Senator Quinn: We have three experts here before us today, and you have an understanding of the magnitude of the project. If you were betting people, will this project be on time and on budget?
Mr. Ika: Past experience suggests that most of these projects end up with time overrun and cost overrun. The only thing that we are not sure about in the literature is [Technical difficulties] the extent to which — some will suggest 9 out of 10, and I will suggest 1 out of 2.
Ms. Smit: Yes, we talk about red flags all the time. This process is fraught with them right now. I would just add as well, on the infrastructure question, the Canadian Infrastructure Council released a report recently on the scale of Canada’s infrastructure debt, and to your question, senator, about whether it is better to build on what we have or something else, we don’t account for the life cycle costs of most of the infrastructure that we have already, and now we are talking about a massive, massive investment. Even if everything went perfectly smoothly to start, 1,000 per cent we’re going to have maintenance issues down the road that we can’t pay for.
Senator Cormier: My question is for Professor El-Geneidy. I read your report with interest and specifically page 10 of your report where you speak about perceived concerns about the high-speed rail. You say that people have concerns around construction delays and cost overruns. In the second paragraph of that page, you say that:
Approximately 40% of respondents reported being not at all concerned about issues such as air pollution or disturbance to natural habitats . . . .
But in the illustration or the table that you provided us, it says that 55% of respondents are somewhat concerned about the impact of natural habitat. So am I reading this correctly? It seems to be contradictory in a way. Can you give us more information about the concerns that people have on natural habitats?
Mr. El-Geneidy: Let me look at the report slowly again. What we looked at was the noise impact and the vibration and the natural habitats here, and we are talking mostly to people living in the cities. We didn’t talk to people along the corridors. That’s the first thing I want to clarify here.
Then in some cases, we were combining two categories — the ones who are “not at all” and “slightly” and “somewhat” concerned, and leave the “moderately” and “extremely” by themselves. That may be the lever of the confusion here.
Senator Cormier: Okay. Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I have a question for Mr. Ika.
I understand that you have doubts. At the same time, however, project delays are expensive. You know that; it was mentioned during the previous panel that delays cost about $2 billion to $3 billion a year. I see that you’re critical of this project. Besides La Fontaine’s fable, do you have any recommendations to help things work better? Because if power is decentralized and too many people are consulted, like they were in Great Britain, we’re left with the same problem. Do you have any constructive recommendations for us?
Mr. Ika: I’m skeptical of the way that things are going to unfold. I don’t know if things are going to run smoothly, or if the consultation and environmental impact study processes are going to go off without a hitch. On that score I’m skeptical, but not necessarily critical.
However, based on what I’ve seen of other projects, and after studying hundreds of them, as I said, the government and authorities working on the project need to develop a choreography.
First of all, the policy framework has to be relatively clear. Responsibilities and the project’s scope must be clearly defined. Earlier, Mr. Imbleau talked about the corridor. All of that needs to be clearly detailed. We need to know what is and what isn’t negotiable. That’s the first thing.
Secondly, the stakeholder rallying or engagement process has to go as deep as possible, with no shortcuts. Otherwise, it’s impossible to deliver what the stakeholders really want.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: The corridor will be presented. Isn’t it enough that they’ll be consulted twice?
Mr. Ika: The stakeholders will decide whether it’s enough or not and when it’s enough for them. Neither you nor I nor anyone else knows what these stakeholders want.
Finally, authority has to be adjusted over time. Project authority or control doesn’t stay the same. In the beginning, a lot of openness is needed to cast as wide a net as possible before shifting to a more balanced planning approach, and ending up with a firm hand on the wheel.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I have another question for Mr. El-Geneidy.
Mr. El-Geneidy, you mentioned that this project will take 44 years to become self-sustainable. I don’t know if you’ve compared this project to similar ones, considering that high-speed trains are almost everywhere in Europe. Is it normal that a project should take 44 years to become profitable? It seems like a long time to me.
[English]
Mr. El-Geneidy: None of the projects were actually self-sufficient at all, even the ones in China. They couldn’t get the full capital costs they have put in. It is very hard to be self-sufficient with public transit, except if you do something like land-value capture. So if we don’t do that, the only one I know of that was successful was the one in Hong Kong where they used the land-value-capture process to build the rail project over there. That is what they are planning in Sydney, Australia; they are considering that in planning their high-speed rail.
So don’t expect any public transit project to be self-sustainable in the long term.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you.
Senator Aucoin: Mr. Ika, now that we’ve heard from Alto and the Department of Transport, because a lot of groups and departments are involved, do you believe that we’re starting off on the right foot?
Mr. Ika: I don’t know if the project is starting off on the right foot or not, but it has good intentions. It’s a question of deciding how to begin, because there will inevitably be obstacles ahead. These projects need to be adaptable. Mr. Imbleau and his entire team will have to be able to adapt to the project’s changing circumstances. That’s where things could get slippery.
Senator Aucoin: Based on the evidence you heard from them today, do you think they’ll be able to adapt to avoid delaying the project?
Mr. Ika: They seem to have expertise and good intentions. The question is whether the consultation process will happen very quickly. If so, the stakeholders could begin grumbling, and then complain or go looking for payback. That’s what we don’t know.
Senator Aucoin: My other question is for Mr. El-Geneidy.
You spoke of safety standards or standards to follow with respect to accidents. You said that the project needs to ensure maximum safety. You also spoke about the fact that accidents on this type of rail line have occurred since 2017. Can you tell us more about this issue?
[English]
Mr. El-Geneidy: I am talking about the Florida high-speed rail. They opened it in 2017. It is moving at 200 kilometres per hour. The Florida one was designed at grade because that follows the regular standards of regular train tracks. They ended up around the 170 deaths since they started, because at grade, the cars go around the barriers and they get hit by the train. They followed the transport authorities in the U.S. to place the gates, but people are not following them; people are jumping in front of the tracks.
High speed requires different standards that we don’t have, so we need to develop new standards. Transport Canada should change their standards of rail, because, right now, the regular standard is that you can do at grade but you do gates; however, you can’t do that with high speed. That’s the Florida example.
[Translation]
Senator Aucoin: Thank you for providing the French version of the report at our request.
[English]
The Chair: We have reached the end of our time, and I would like to thank our witnesses. If there are any answers that need further written support. Professor El-Geneidy, that whole issue on developing land around the stations in terms of value added — if you want to give us any form of a one-pager on that just to clarify the value that can add, which helps the profitability picture, that would be really appreciated. If you were able to do that and get something to us — just a one-pager — by December 23, 2025. If other witnesses want to submit any follow-up, reinforcements, et cetera, that really talk about the value and the value added so that we get to some opinions on profitability opportunities, that would be appreciated also. If you send anything in writing, do so by December 23, and we can say that you sent us a Christmas present.
I thank the witnesses, and I thank everyone for your time today. It was very informative, and all of us appreciated it. On behalf of the senators and all of our staff, thank you so much.
(The committee adjourned.)