Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau speaks at a press conference in the Old Port of Montreal on Feb. 19.ANDREJ IVANOV/AFP/Getty Images
“This is real now,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “for the first time in a long time.”
He was talking about high-speed rail between Quebec City and Toronto, and from his words you might guess the Prime Minister had conjured up a thousand kilometres of track from thin air and ultra-fast trains are now speeding between central Canada’s cities.
But no, it is not real.
Even allowing for the special branch of bureaucratic metaphysics that might see as “real” the thing that happened Wednesday – the naming of the consortium that will “co-develop” the high-speed rail plan – this was nothing like real. It was the glow of a mirage, one that is real only because of dollars devoted and fresh ink on a press release.
If Mr. Trudeau’s government were at another stage in its life, the choice of consortium might be seen as a firm go-ahead that places high-speed rail irreversibly (cough) on track.
But the Trudeau ministry is in its last weeks and the twilight of its powers. It cannot plausibly commit the government of Canada to a multiyear building project that would cost many, many tens of billions of dollars.
Certainly, Mr. Trudeau’s government is constitutionally and legally able to make decisions. It is not a caretaker government. But it is a lame-duck government. Mr. Trudeau has announced his impending resignation. His government has limited political authority to make plans for the future and even less power to make them happen.
Mr. Trudeau didn’t do it when he really had the chance. Now, his announcement amounts to an election-campaign promise for his successor as Liberal Leader.
It’s no surprise that the two leading contenders in that race, Mark Carney and Chrystia Freeland, are endorsing the high-speed rail plan.
It fits neatly into the dynamic that Liberals will want for an election campaign at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening Canada’s economy with tariffs – that Liberals will build while Conservatives would cut.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has promised tax cuts – but also privately financed oil and gas pipelines – but Mr. Carney, in particular, has promised to pour public funds into infrastructure. Such as high-speed rail.
“This has all the potential to be the type of project, public-private partnership, that our country needs,” Mr. Carney told reporters at a campaign stop on Wednesday.
Now the ball is in Mr. Poilievre’s court. He must decide if he’d build high-speed rail, too. Given the price tag, and the Conservative Leader’s rhetorical emphasis on tax cuts, he will probably decline. Then the project could become a political football in the campaign. At any rate, the future of high-speed rail in Canada is still very uncertain.
That makes Mr. Trudeau’s comments lauding the high-speed rail project on Wednesday all the more annoying.
His government batted the idea back and forth and back again for nine slow years, unable to settle on whether Canada should build high-speed rail or high-frequency rail, bogged down in debates about whether high-speed trains should be less high-speed so they could stop in more towns where there are voters. The cost was so big that Mr. Trudeau’s government never mustered the political courage to make it happen. They procrastinated.
Yet on Wednesday, the Prime Minister was calling high-speed rail a “game-changer” and arguing it will stimulate the economy and strengthen the bonds between the two most populous provinces. All true, but also: Argh! Mr. Trudeau’s government decided to go all in just as they ran out of time.
The potential price tag is eye-watering, for sure, and that needs to justified. But bringing transportation into the 21st century in Canada’s most populous corridor is public good in itself. High-speed rail would increase ridership.
And there’s that thing Mr. Trudeau mentioned about increasing bonds between Ontario and Quebec. Last October, Jean-François Lisée, the former Parti Québécois leader who is now a regular Radio-Canada pundit, said he couldn’t understand why successive prime ministers who fretted about national unity didn’t build high-speed rail many years ago.
It will wait more years now. There’s been another step on a road of process that the Liberal government has slow-walked for nigh on a decade. But no, it’s still not real.