The National Farmers Union has a policy supporting high-speed railways, but not the federal government’s plan for Alto, a high-speed railway to be built to link Ottawa and Montreal.
It said the National Farmers Union wants green, affordable, and reliable public transportation, and Alto isn’t it.
Alto’s secretive, unaccountable and baseless High Speed Rail (HSR) project—to build a bullet train between Toronto and Quebec city—must be stopped quickly, it said in a news release.
HSR was given a green light in 2024 and added to the Major Projects Office's list last year to "accelerate engineering, regulatory, and permitting work"—while parallel changes to the Expropriation Act will speed up the acquisition of properties for the new Right-of-Way for this HSR project, the NFU said.
This is a hasty, ill-considered commitment to billions of dollars of taxpayer funding per year over two generations to construct high speed rail with little supporting evidence or accountability, it said.
Alto HSR will mean significantly less funding for much-needed projects that would deliver real results, and long-term austerity for low-priority sectors.
Too often agriculture is seen as low priority—as the short-sighted closure of agricultural farms and research stations in January showed us—pinching pennies today while throwing away a 30:1 return on investment that benefits farms, their communities, and the dwindling next generation of farmers, the NFU said.
It also noted that one of the projects partners is the former SNC Lavalin that Was disgraced over paying bribes.
