The Ontario Landowners Association held their Annual General Meeting on April 18, 2026 in Cobourg Ontario. Rebel News was there. You can see the highlights of the meeting, as captured by Rebel News, at https://www.rebelnews.com/ontario_landowners_push_back_against_high_speed_rail_and_property_rights_threats.
As you will see in the video, high-speed rail has been proposed in Ontario before. An article in the former Landowner Magazine (April/May 2018 issue) told the story of plans for high-speed rail between Toronto and Windsor. “Via Rail and the Province of Ontario have announced some interesting new plans for intercity passenger services, potentially requiring new infrastructure or the resurrection of routes that passed into history more than three quarters of a century ago”, states the article. But this project was derailed by the Ford government in 2019, primarily due to concerns over its projected high costs, estimated at over $20 billion, and the massive disruption of prime agricultural land through expropriation. The Tories argued for reviewing alternative, less invasive transportation options instead. And here we are again, same concerns, only now its $90 billion and with new expropriation laws by the federal government, making it easier to take your land.
While Europe and countries like Japan were investing in inter- and intra-city transit by train, Canada, it seems, was busy closing down rail lines and investing in municipal transit systems that are plagued with problems, like the LRT in Ottawa.
Ontario did have a high-speed rail system which operated between 1968 and 1982. Canada and the provinces choose to invest in air travel and highways and this eventually led to the demise of the Via Rail TurboTrain. https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/turbotrain.
See the OLA’s discussion Forum for a chronological, Coles notes review of the proposed Alto High-Speed Rail project https://ontariolandowners.ca/community/land-use-zoning/high-speed-rail-system-and-new-expropriation-act/.