CORY MORGAN： Canada's high-speed rail dream is just a Liberal slush fund in disguise
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Summary
The Canadian government is planning a $100 billion high-speed rail line between Montreal and Toronto, but there's a catch: it's in the Laurentian Corridor, a rural area with a population of over 20 million people along an 800-kilometre stretch of track.
Transcript
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Hang on to your pocketbooks. This is the latest big liberal project. So while the Canadian
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economy is on the rocks, you know, we've got the ongoing tariff war racking the manufacturing
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sector while Canada's soft embargo on expanding the ability to export oil and gas products
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prevents the energy sector from filling the economic void. We've got subsidies for everything
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from battery plants to edible cricket farms, and they produce nothing more than a list of business
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failures and our national debt's exploding. Yeah, nice picture. So to address all of this,
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the economic wizard of Prime Minister Mark Carney has decided what the nation must do is sink
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around $100 billion into a publicly owned high-speed rail project to service the
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Laurentian Corridor in eastern Canada. The insanity of this notion beggars belief,
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yet the Liberal Party, along with its stalwart supporters and legacy media, have circled the
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wagons and are now in full campaign mode, pushing the alleged merits of a high-speed rail line.
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Proponents of the line can't pretend there isn't a model of a North American high-speed project to
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examine before diving into this one. California began its high-speed rail odyssey in 2008.
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It was supposed to run between Los Angeles and San Francisco and cost about 35 billion US dollars
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to build. They anticipated it to be operational by 2020. Yeah, six years ago. And with over 20
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million people along an 800-kilometer corridor, surely it could be a viable route for high-speed
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rail, right? Well, after 20 years and billions spent, not a single mile of track is operational
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on the California line. The budget's exploded over $126 billion for phase one, and they hope
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it might be operational by 2040. In short, it's been a catastrophe, and due to the government
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clinging to the sunk cost fallacy, we'll be able to watch this slow-motion train wreck for decades
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to come. The Canadian plan now is even more ambitious than the California one. They want
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to build a thousand kilometers of high-speed rail for regions with far less population density than
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California. They're going to have to try and get it built in adverse Canadian weather, and they
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think it could be done for 23% lower than the current California line projections, and they
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think it's going to be finished by the 2040s as well. Now look at the modest, relatively modest
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light rail transit expansion of the Ontario line. These are the same geniuses who are going to build
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this high-speed one, right? A mere 15.5 kilometers of line was supposed to be built with a projected
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cost of $10.9 billion in 2019, and it was going to be ready to go by 2027, next year. Well, the cost
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over seven years is tripled, and the completion date's been pushed into the 2030s. Just think of
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what they're going to be able to do with a high-speed rail megaproject. Proponents of high-speed rail
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like to point to European and Asian models as examples to follow, but it isn't an apples-to-apples
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comparison by any measure. First of all, the population densities aren't even comparable.
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I mean, Japan's in an area smaller than Newfoundland, and it's got 120 million people.
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European and Asian cities are massive and close together, which creates a demand and feasibility.
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Even in the Laurentian Corridor, the precious Laurentian Corridor, Canada comes over close to the densities of Europe and Asia.
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In Canada, over 80% of citizens have a private vehicle.
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In Europe, it's only 56%, and the number's even lower in most of Asia.
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People in Canada aren't going to give up their vehicles in the millions
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just because they have access to a high-speed rail option,
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The ongoing subsidies, though, are going to be massive
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If the cost of the line and its maintenance are going to be recovered,
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the tickets will have to cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars each.
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It'll take over a century to pay it off if people are willing to pay that much.
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you could pay for the airline flights between Montreal and Toronto
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for 180 years for the cost this line's going to be.
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The economic benefits of such a line are negligible.
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it won't be transporting freight and with modern communication methods people don't need to commute
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like they used to the tourism demand between those cities service is small and the novelty of the
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line itself certainly isn't going to bring people out the liberal government likes spending
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announcements and likes mega projects which are going to provide contracts and jobs for their
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friends for decades to come whether the projects are ever completed or not for caps canada should
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just institute a direct fund with a budget of a few billion a year that liberals can legally
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transfer to their cronies with it'd be abhorrent but still cheaper than going through the motions
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of building a high-speed rail line and maybe more effective for economic stimulation. You don't need
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to be non-stradamus to foresee the disaster this high-speed rail line is going to become.
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It's just going to matter how much is going to be blown on it and how long before fiscal reality
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forces the project to be formally ended. And one more word of warning, as much as I like her,
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our Premier Daniel Smith has got a fixation on trains and high-speed rail as well. We could
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see such a boondoggle out here if we aren't on guard. They sure love building those things.