A Conservative MP whose riding sits directly in the path of Ottawa’s proposed high speed rail corridor is warning the $60 billion to $90 billion project will saddle Canadians with massive costs while tearing apart rural communities.Blacklock's Reporter says as the House of Commons passed the High Speed Rail Network Act, Scott Reid (Lanark–Frontenac, Ont.) denounced the plan as fiscally reckless and socially destructive, arguing taxpayers across the country will be forced to bankroll a project that primarily benefits central Canadian urban centres.The legislation empowers Alto Corp., a federal Crown agency, to oversee construction of a 1,000-kilometre electrified rail line linking Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa, Laval, Montréal, Trois-Rivières and Québec City, with trains projected to reach speeds of 300 kkm/h. The Department of Transport has pegged the cost between $60 billion and $90 billion.Reid told MPs the higher-end estimate would translate into a staggering burden for ordinary families. With roughly 40 million Canadians — or about 10 million families of four — a $90 billion price tag works out to about $9,000 per family, he said, regardless of whether they ever use or even see the rail line.“It doesn’t matter if you live in Nunavut and will never even see this rail, your family is paying $9,000,” Reid told the Commons, calling the estimate “mind-blowingly high.”He questioned why taxpayers in provinces such as Alberta, British Columbia and Newfoundland should subsidize a project he characterized as designed to shave about 90 minutes off travel times between Toronto and Montréal..Beyond the national price tag, Reid said the local consequences in his eastern Ontario riding could be severe. Two potential routes — a northern and a southern alignment — cut through his constituency. Whichever route is selected, he warned, property owners would face expropriation or declining land values with little recourse.Reid argued landowners whose properties are bisected by the proposed Alto line would receive no compensation for diminished property values if their land is not directly expropriated. Communities could be divided, he said, with long-term economic and social fallout.To date, the federal cabinet has budgeted $4.3 billion in preparatory spending for the rail service. Reid predicted the government will spend several more billion dollars, begin expropriations and then abandon the project before completion, leaving taxpayers with sunk costs and disrupted communities.“We do not have the money to spend $90 billion,” Reid said. “We’ll spend three or four billion, do a series of expropriations, destroy lives, and then it will be shut down unfinished with no benefit except to the consultants.”
