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As a native Montrealer, this is an incredibly exciting project. After 50+ years of studies, this is by far the furthest an actual project has come along.
A consortium, Cadence, has finally been selected to plan and build a High Speed Rail option, rather than just High Frequency Rail (which was a possibility).
The announcement has come with ~$4 billion CAD allocated for the planning and design of the route.
Politics is what will decide if this project ever sees construction though. This project was announced by the Liberal Party of Canada (under PM Trudeau) but Canada will soon be holding a federal election. The LPC has a new leader in Mark Carney who will be principally running against Pierre Poilievre of the Conservative Party of Canada. It is not clear what the CPC’s official position is regarding the project, but they have publicly expressed skepticism.
Interesting times ahead to say the least.
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CityMoose’s good video about Canada’s HSR project:
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To provide some recent context for this project (aiming to be politically neutral here as always):
The Liberal party of Canada, under Mark Carney who had assumed leadership after PM Trudeau had resigned, unexpectedly won the April 2025 election.
One of this government first major piece of legislation is Bill C-5, which (among other things) aims to streamline and accelerate the regulatory process for major nation-building projects that are deemed to be in the ‘national interest’. The Alto-HSR project was rumoured to be one of the first projects to be nominated to be in the national interest.
Alto-HSR was not named as one of the first five projects, however was separately named among six other projects that ‘require further work before approval’. That is to say, the project is still ongoing, but requires further work before it can be officially be marked as fast-tracked project.
There has also been news reports that the government is trying to expedite the design phase of the project irrespective of whether it ever gets officially flagged as a ‘national interest’ project.
In any case, this is by far the furthest a HSR project has ever progressed in Canadian history, despite the idea having been the subject of at least a dozen studies over that last 30-40 years.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/high-speed-rail-ottawa-montreal-9.7013138
Montreal-Ottawa chosen as the first segment of the Canada HSR project.
This was largely expected given that:
- The segment is likely the cheapest given how short it is and existing available alignments
- It’s politically more digestible for the first segment to benefit two provinces at once
- It forces political and private sector (construction industry) cooperation between the two provinces
Also, the project has been nominated as a project of ‘national interest’, which will allow it to circumvent a lot of regulatory hurdles. Though this is obviously not without a degree of controversy. The goal is to start construction by 2029, which is four years earlier than originally planned.
The alignment is planned to be announced and open to consultation by Autumn 2026.
My opinion section:
[Deleted. I’ve concluded it’s a fool’s errand to speculate or worry about possible alignments and station placements at this stage.]
Here’s the CBC news segment about the announcement:
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A video commissioned by the CBC elaborating on why the Ottawa-Montreal should be the first segment constructed. In a twist of fate, this video was released the day before the official announcement!
Note that the majority of the reasoning easily applies to Australian HSR construction!
The project’s public consultation website has launched, including a vague proposed corridor and station placements.
The major stations are projected to be proper downtown (CBD) stations, rather than peripheral stations as some had speculated.
The first half of 2026 is dedicated to public consultations and field studies. Consultations with all levels of government, industry representatives and first nations peoples are ongoing.
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