Budget Bill Seeks to Expedite Expropriations for Toronto-Quebec High-Speed Rail

A VIA Rail train sits idle at the train station in Churchill, Man., on June 22, 2017. The Canadian Press/Alex de Vries

The federal budget omnibus bill would allow VIA Rail to expropriate land from Canadians without going through the normal procedural steps in order to build a long-planned high-speed rail between Toronto and Quebec City.

Current rules outlined in the Expropriation Act require a railway company to make a purchase offer and attempt to negotiate when taking private property for public use, but the new law would remove this requirement entirely.

“The Corporation is not required to have attempted to purchase an interest or right required for the high-speed rail network before it requests to have the interest or right expropriated,” states Bill C-15, which was tabled on Nov. 18.

Bill C-15 states that under the High-Speed Rail Network Act, a new federal Crown corporation would be created as a subsidiary of VIA Rail. The government announced in February that the Crown corporation Alto would operate a rail network that spans approximately 1,000 kilometres between Toronto and Quebec City, with trains that could reach speeds of up to 300 kilometres per hour.

The Expropriation Act also says that if the railway company had “unsuccessfully attempted to purchase” the land it needed for the railway, then it may request that the transport minister and cabinet agree to the purchase and to have the Crown expropriate the land for public use. However, the proposed legislation would not require cabinet or the transport minister to carry out this step or require the railway company to demonstrate that it had attempted to purchase the land.

While the Expropriation Act allows for someone to submit an objection to the expropriation and then requires the transportation minister to call a public hearing and consult with the wider community, the proposal in the budget states that these processes would “not apply in respect of objections to an intended expropriation of an interest or right required for the high-speed rail network.”

Gabriel Giguère, senior policy analyst at the think tank MEI, said in a Nov. 24 press release that the federal government had “thrown out the normal safeguards that protect homeowners from abusive expropriation.” The new system for VIA Rail meant that “Canadians are no longer treated as sellers, but as people to be dispossessed,” he added.

Giguère said that the changes to the Expropriation Act would negatively impact the livelihoods of farmers who risk being impacted by the process, as the removal of just small parts of their land could make their operations unsustainable.

He also said Ottawa seemed to have “forgotten the lessons learned” from the expropriation of farmlands for the Mirabel airport project in Quebec in the 1960s. Ottawa later sold back the expropriated land to hundreds of families, the airport’s passenger terminal was demolished in 2016, and then-Transport Minister Marc Garneau said in 2019 that the government made a “big mistake.”

In a statement to The Epoch Times, Transport Canada said the “complexity” of building a high-speed rail network, including the speed of the train imposing “strict limits” on allowable rail curvature, meant adjustments to the Expropriation Act are needed.

Transport Canada said the High-Speed Rail Network Act would not modify the compensation regime under the Expropriation Act, and individuals and organizations will still be able to negotiate compensation and challenge the amount before the Federal Court. The objection process would be replaced with a process similar to that under the Expropriation Act.

Alto’s purchase of land to build the railway would also not limit landowners’ ability to list or sell their property on the open market, Transport Canada said. “Ultimately, the proposed Act ensures a transparent and respectful process for all those affected,” in addition to making the process for securing the rail corridor more efficient, the department said.

Paul Langan, founder of High-Speed Rail Canada and a long-time advocate for passenger rail, said the new provisions are meant to streamline the process for land that’s needed urgently to enable the project. He said compensation procedures and transparency are built in for affected owners.

“As a person who has watched the ups and downs of attempts to implement high-speed rail in Canada for over 40 years there is some optimism,” Langan said.

Rail Network

Then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in February that Ottawa would allocate an initial $3.9 billion for the development phase of the rail network. The Prime Minister’s Office estimated the building of the train network would create 51,000 jobs during construction and boost Canada’s GDP by up to $35 billion annually.

The Carney government, in announcing projects to be referred to the recently created Major Projects Office that aims to fast-track project approvals, listed Alto High-Speed Rail as among projects that could be “transformative” for Canada and that are “at an earlier stage and require further development.” The office said it will “accelerate engineering, regulatory, and permitting work to enable construction of the project to start in four years, cutting the original eight-year timeline in half.”

Budget 2025, released on Nov. 4, proposes $4.1 billion in co-development funding for the high-speed rail project over the five-year period from 2025–26 to 2029–30. The budget proposes legislative amendments to “streamline approval processes and reduce regulatory uncertainties” for the rail project, and that this is “not expected to have significant direct impacts on particular groups.”

The budget said indigenous communities and “other underrepresented groups” are being engaged on the railway’s design, and that the completed project would directly benefit travellers who are “more likely to be students, highly educated, and middle-income households.”