🇨🇦 $113B train fantasy meets reality

Alto says it will deliver a Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail line on time and on budget, while the Parliamentary Budget Office pegs the price at $75 billion to $113 billion and Quebec’s incoming PQ government says no thanks. Classic Ottawa logic: build first, ask the province later, and let taxpayers eat the bill forever. Even Alto chair J. Robert S. Prichard basically shrugged that federal-provincial conflict is above his pay grade, which is an elegant way of admitting this Crown corporation is playing politics with public money, as reported.

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is right on one point: Quebec has collapsing roads, strained hospitals and aging transit, yet the Laurentian managerial class wants a prestige megaproject stretching 15 years because bureaucrats adore ribbon cuttings more than national solvency. Steven MacKinnon sells cooperative federalism, but what Ottawa really means is central planners dictating priorities while pretending it is partnership. Canada does not need another subsidy furnace for consultants, lobbyists and contractors. It needs governments that stop confusing empire-building with infrastructure.

🍁 Maple Chronicles