Canadian and Design Construction writer
If elected in October, the Québécois Party will withdraw from the TGV Québec-Toronto high speed rail project, Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon announced Tuesday, calling the project “a $200 billion financial fiasco.”
“At a time when we face one of the worst deficits in our history in Quebec and infrastructure that is collapsing, tough choices are to be made,” Plamondon said in a statement. “Every dollar invested should be based on our priorities and serve the state’s core missions first: health, education and safety for all. This is where our money should go first.
“I can’t justify the Quebecers that their money is invested in a pharaonic project that, according to studies, will have little impact on traffic on our roads and which will greatly risk being a huge financial failure.”
Alto is currently analyzing a zone approximately 10 km wide corridor in order to assess various possible scenarios for the route of the future high-speed train. At this stage of the project, no final route decisions have been made.Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has also called for the project to be cancelled, calling it as an unnecessary expense for taxpayers and farm organizations from Quebec, Ontario and across Canada are urging Ottawa to reconsider the proposed rail corridor, warning costs could exceed projections and that agricultural land could be negatively affected.
The TGV Alto project is now estimated at potentially nearly $200 billion by the Bloc Québécois with Quebec’s share approaching $40 billion and Plamondon says it won’t address the “real problem” with public transport.
“Imagine what we could do with $40 billion,” he said. “Firstly, the sums are so huge that instead, we could renovate almost all of our cluttered infrastructures: schools, hospitals, roads and public transport infrastructure.”
Currently, the Quebec government’s asset maintenance deficit is $45 billion with about 40 per cent of hospital buildings and 60 per cent of schools considered to be “trash,” according to the Quebecois leader, who estimated roads require $31 billion to be restored.
“I know this stance won’t necessarily be popular, but as the leader of a political party that aspires to form a responsible government, I cannot condone this waste at the expense of vital projects for the population,” he stated. “The Québécois Party is not in this sense opposed to the TGV as a means of transport or at all, but we simply believe that the urgency is to maintain and renovate our infrastructures, not to cut the ribbons.
“That is why a government of the Parti Quebec will put an end to the TGV Alto project and demand that the sums be directly paid to us without any condition in order to invest in what is a priority in Quebec: our hospitals, our schools, our road network and our own public transport network.”
The debate over the future of high-speed rail is expected to remain a key issue as Quebec heads toward its provincial election on Oct. 5.
