A well-respected member of rural Ottawa once said “Ottawa does not have a revenue problem; they have a spending problem”. I believe they still do – not enough money to fix our rural roads or clean out our rural ditches, but plenty of money to, for example, establish an Arts, Culture, and Entertainment (ACE) district in the ByWard Market. In the meantime, our LRT continues to be plagued by problems, the latest being an announcement that Line 4 running from the Ottawa Airport to South Keys was down for a short period due to staffing shortages.
A similar spending problem appears to have taken a firm hold at the Federal level. In January 2026, news started coming out about a $60 to $90 billion dollar project known as Alto High-Speed Rail (HSR). Most rural communities oppose the HSR, both in Quebec and Ontario, as seen at the protest in downtown Ottawa on June 10. Businesses, residents, and politicians came together to air their thoughts on the project.
This project is very worrisome, considering similar big transportation plans such as the Pickering airport and Mirabel, which did not come to fruition. But, so far, Alto has paid out $1.6 million in advertising and almost $3 million in executive bonuses. Remarkably, one of the executives is our Finance Minister’s wife. https://farmersforum.com/alto-high-speed-train-executives-pay-themselves-huge-bonuses-spend-1-59-to-advertise-a-train-that-doesnt-exist/
On June 21, Minister McKinnon announced that Kingston is being considered as one of the stops of the HSR, along with Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa, Laval, Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and Quebec City. According to Global News: “Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon said Monday he was “acting on what we heard” in public consultations spanning three months in roughly two-dozen communities this year.
“This is a strong indication of preference for one route over another,” he told reporters in Kingston, while stressing that no final decision has been made.” https://globalnews.ca/news/11916093/high-speed-rail-kingston-stop-considered-alto/
The following day, Alto released their What We Heard reports from their consultations heard earlier this year. https://www.altotrain.ca/en/news/release-report-and-kingston
There is a growing groundswell of opposition to the Alto HSR project, in both Ontario and Quebec. The PQ, for example, have said that if they are elected this Fall, they will halt the high-speed train.
Land expropriations between Ottawa and Montreal could start as early as this Fall, and certainly long before the shovels hit the dirt to build the rail system in 2029-30. And there’s the problem. Land could be expropriated and never used for the purpose of a high-speed rail. This is the lesson that has politicians and residents of Mirabel so upset and opposed to the HSR, where land was expropriated but never used for the purpose for which it was taken.
The Alto public consultations were inadequate and more like marketing shows, trying to sell a questionable product. Why is the opposition of the many being ignored? Why can we not have a pause on the project and evaluate if this is the best way forward for rail travel? Many have suggested a return to the notion of High-Frequency Rail travel which would cost less and serve more communities.
MP Scott Reid has spoken out against the Alto project which traverses his riding. He has attended many of the opposition meetings including in Sharbot Lake, Navan, and Casselman. Here is MP Reid’s analysis of the Alto project as presented in Casselman
Will the addition of a Kingston stop make the project more viable? We think not!