Wanderings – Is Alto the next Seaway project?

The Canadian government is backing the construction of a new high-speed rail system. That system will eventually link Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, and Quebec City. Alto is expected to be operational by the mid-2040s and is one of those multi-billion-dollar generational projects that Prime Minister Mark Carney and his predecessor Justin Trudeau were pushing. It is also a project that has the highest potential of not only being a boondoggle, but to mirror the disastrous effects of the St. Lawrence Seaway project 70-plus years ago.

The route of the high-speed line takes the Alto train from Toronto to Ottawa via Peterborough, bypassing nearly three-quarters of a million residents in communities along Highway 401. Instead, the line will somewhat follow the Highway 7 corridor with a significantly smaller population. Stations in Ottawa and Montréal are expected to bypass those cities’ downtown cores, creating suburban hubs and more sprawl. There are four stations in Québec versus three in Ontario.

The route in Eastern Ontario is becoming contentious north of Kingston, where landowners are concerned about expropriation and the environmentally-sensitive Frontenac Arch Biosphere. Community leaders in places such as Kingston are asking why their community does not have a station. There is also the project cost. A 2025 estimate is $60–90 billion — but rarely do government projects finish on budget.

The St. Lawrence Seaway Project was a 1950s shipping and power generation project that expanded the canals connecting the St. Lawrence River to Lake Ontario, allowing ocean-going ships to pass. The power generation aspect saw seven villages wiped off the map, two more fully-or-partly relocated, two new villages created, and about 40,000 acres of land flooded to create a power pool for a large hydro-electric dam. During that time, provincial governments ran rough-shod over property rights, expropriating land for unfair values. The ecological damage to the St. Lawrence River valley between Prescott and Montréal is considerable. Alto, with its planned route and the requirement for an uninterrupted train route with zero rail crossings, running through the ecological area north of Kingston has the potential to create similar and irreversible damage to the environment. Meanwhile, violations of property rights and unfair compensation can easily happen as Alto is considered a project of national interest, which gives the federal government through the Building Canada Act the ability to step in. History repeats itself.

The other reason Alto looks like another Seaway project is the inflated promises. Fast travel times and connections across major cities are appealing — if you live near a station. But with suburban stops disconnected from city cores, that promise of connection may prove hollow. Given how far off completion is, we cannot know how accessible it will be. Alto also claims it will be minimally intrusive to the environment. When the Seaway was pitched in the 1950s, jobs, new shipping opportunities, abundant electricity, and opened land were promised. The construction trucks had barely left when those promises rang hollow. Seventy years on, much of Eastern Ontario affected by the Seaway project remains stagnant.

Canada needs passenger rail, but does it need Alto? No. We already have a passenger rail system, in Ontario and Quebec. For the most part, that has not functioned properly since the January 1990 cuts by the government of Brian Mulroney. Funding for equipment and improvement of existing routes is done as a hodgepodge at best. New trains are limited because of the Crown-owned passenger rail company’s relationship with Canadian National Railways, which owns much of the track they operate on. New equipment bought on the cheap doesn’t match the needs of the users and is unreliable. Some equipment dating back to 1954 still runs. Passenger rail in this country is a mess. Starting fresh with a 15-plus-year high-speed rail project isn’t going to fix it.

I would love to ride high-speed rail in this country. But first we need existing services running properly, funded properly, and accessible to the people who already live along those routes. What we do not need is another mega-project built on promises we have heard before.

This column was originally published in the March 4, 2026 print edition of the Morrisburg Leader.