{"id":725450,"date":"2026-06-09T15:55:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T15:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/725450\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T15:55:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T15:55:19","slug":"ottawa-should-give-quebec-the-money-instead-of-building-high-speed-rail-link-pq-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/725450\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa should give Quebec the money instead of building high-speed rail link, PQ says"},"content":{"rendered":"

QUEBEC \u2014 Should he win the October election, Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon says he would block Ottawa\u2019s plan to build a high-speed rail line<\/a> through Quebec.<\/p>\n

The Quebec portion of the line would cost Ottawa close to $40 billion, St-Pierre Plamondon said in a statement on Tuesday, citing Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois calculations that estimate the entire Toronto to Quebec City route could run as high as $200 billion.<\/p>\n

Alto, the Crown Corporation tasked with building the project, offers a lower estimate, predicting the line would cost between $60 billion and $90 billion.<\/p>\n

The PQ \u201chas fought waste for years,\u201d St-Pierre Plamondon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t justify to Quebecers that their money be invested in a colossal project that, according to studies, would have little impact on road traffic and strongly risks becoming an enormous financial fiasco,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Planned to run between Quebec City and Toronto with stops in Montreal, Laval, Trois-Rivi\u00e8res, Ottawa and Peterborough, the project is still in its planning phase.<\/p>\n

Alto says the high-speed line would connect Montreal to Toronto in around three hours and Quebec City to Montreal in around an hour and a half.<\/p>\n

St-Pierre Plamondon argued Tuesday that Ottawa should instead give Quebec the money it would have spent building the province\u2019s segment of the rail line.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sums are so immense that we could, in its place, renovate almost all of our dilapidated infrastructure,\u201d he said, proposing Quebec spend the billions in federal money on schools, hospitals, roads and public transit.<\/p>\n

St-Pierre Plamondon\u2019s PQ is currently at the top of the polls, leading what is expected to be a three-way race<\/a> to take power this October.<\/p>\n

The high-speed rail project already faces opposition from the federal Conservative Party and the Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois.<\/p>\n

Alongside costs, the two federal parties and the Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois take issue with the expropriations that would be necessary to build to project.<\/p>\n

Farmers along the planned route have opposed the expropriations, which they say risk cutting them off from their land<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This report will be updated.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Profile<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tI’ve reported for The Gazette since 2024. I love covering a good politics story, but any day I tell Montrealers something new about the world around them feels like a good one. Got a tip for me? Email me at jawilson@postmedia.com\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tjawilson@postmedia.com
\n\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"QUEBEC \u2014 Should he win the October election, Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon says he would block…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":725451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739,230663,151490,120789,247503],"class_list":["post-725450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa","tag-parti-quebecois-pq","tag-public-transit","tag-quebec-elections","tag-rail-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/725451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}