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    Pierre Poilievre hates Mark Carney’s high-speed rail plan. Is his attack a ‘political loser’?
    Canada

    Pierre Poilievre hates Mark Carney’s high-speed rail plan. Is his attack a ‘political loser’?


    Pierre Poilievre hates Mark Carney’s high-speed rail plan. Is his attack a ‘political loser’?

    https://www.thestar.com/politics/pierre-poilievre-hates-mark-carneys-high-speed-rail-plan-is-his-attack-a-political-loser/article_8e71aff5-1d84-4b17-8710-f59af94d1bca.html

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    12 Comments

    1. PaddlefootCanada on

      Pierre is going to hate on everything Carney does until one of those things fail, and the. He’ll be all “see, I was right”.

      Doesn’t take much to be a contrarian and just wait until the other person fails….

    2. Mathmos_Lava on

      Probably a loser for ridings in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, probably not for ridings in between that oppose the plan. Overall a bad take considering the number of ridings in the city’s vs outside.

    3. Elegant-Tangerine-54 on

      There is some rational political calculus behind PP’s position. While polls show moderate overall support for the high speed rail plan, those who hate it hate it a lot. PP may be counting up the ridings where opposition to the planned route is high.

      Also an infrastructure project on that scale has a lot of inherent risk, especially in terms of timeline and budget over runs (we can pretty much take budget over runs as a given). So PP is laying down his markers now to position himself for an “I told you so” stance if things go sideways.

    4. JohnnyPark5 on

      Regardless, this rail is never being built and will waste a ton of money on consultants and studies. Why does a high speed railway cost more than building a damn base on the moon?

    5. bapeandvape on

      I don’t think people are being fair to Pierre’s criticism over this. And I don’t lie Pierre. I’m a center voter and voted liberal this election.

      Ontario could barely build the new subway lines without going over budget and taking longer than planned. We could barely get a pipeline built without the government have to take it over and spend billions of taxpayer dollars to ensure it gets built. We struggle so much to build and attract investment in general that we are supposed to build a high speed rail in just about 10 years?! Ha ha ha.

      I’m allll for the high speed rail. I think the good heavily outweighs the bad. However, the estimates are70-90BN which will most likely be more and goes through people’s properties who they have spent years of hard work to build and own.

    6. MightyHydrar on

      Might be a winner in the ridings that get the negative impacts (noise, land expropriation, possibly disrupted roads / longer travel times) and few benefits because the train will only have a handful of stops. 

    7. Zyrian1954 on

      VIA Rail studied high-speed rail between Toronto and Montreal in 1984. In the 1990’s SNC-Lavalin studied routing and cost. Then there was the VIAFast Study (2002), the SNCF High-Speed Rail Study (2010), and the Windsor-Quebec City EcoTrain proposal (2011). In 2016 there was the High-Speed Rail in Ontario Special Advisor’s Report. In 2022 there was the Alstom report with seven separate proposals to connect Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and Quebec City with TGV (train a grand vitesse) technology. And now **ALTO (Accelerating Long-distance Travel in Ontario and Quebec) project is seeking public input in their study. Every study or report suggests there is benefits to having a high speed rail and one would think after 42 years maybe it’s time to make a decision?**

    8. CommodoreSteubing on

      Outside a few rural Ontario ridings where the CPC already does very well… yes it is.

      Obviously we need to fairly compensate landowners who’ll be affected along the planned route, and I’d love to see more robust regional bus services linking small communities along the Alto line to major stations, but there’s no reason getting quickly between our two largest cities should require flying and all its attendant bullshit.

    9. SmileRemarkable8876 on

      In theory it is good idea but it is also extremely expensive. We are talking crazy money. And it’ll cost a fortune to get a ticket. 

      On top of that our record at building major infrastructure projectd is abysmal. Ottawa has a light rail that is a total boondoggle.

    10. ChuckVader on

      What’s this? PP hates something another political party does? And has no substantive comments as to why it’s bad? Must be a day that ends in “y”.

    11. SlapThatAce on

      Pierre Poilievre IS a political loser. Also, high speed rail is not an option it’s a necessity! Furthermore in wartime rail is key to defending the country. LEARN FROM UKRAINE AND RUSSIA!