The Ottawa Board of Trade has joined a coalition of business organizations to urge the federal government to move ahead with the VIA high-frequency rail project.
On Oct. 9, a coalition of five chambers of commerce and boards of trade in the Toronto-Québec City corridor sent a letter to Transport Minister Anita Anand to explain why an efficient transportation system would boost productivity for the region that is home to nearly 18 million Canadians and accounts for about 45 per cent of Canada’s population and 40 per cent of Canada’s GDP.
“Canada is facing a productivity crisis,” said Sueling Ching, president and CEO of the Ottawa Board of Trade, in a press release. “We have the opportunity to make bold and transformative investments into our country’s infrastructure and to reinforce our Canadian value chain in the rail sector.
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“A high-speed passenger rail project will position the Toronto-Québec City corridor as a global business hub, in turn attracting new investments, enhancing our visitor economy, and better connecting nearly 18 million residents.”
The rail project would connect seven major cities in Eastern Ontario and Quebec: Toronto, Peterborough, Ottawa, Montreal, Laval, Trois-Rivieres and Quebec City.
According to the project’s website, the HFR project will have “new, electrified and dedicated tracks that extend over 1000 km,” and top speeds could reach 200 kilometres per hour.
The coalition – made up of the Ottawa Board of Trade, Toronto Region Board of Trade, Chambre Commerce et Industries Trois-Rivières, Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Québec, and La Chambre de commerce du Montréal métropolitain – emphasized the “importance of speed” in its letter to the minister, saying the VIA HFR project will offer “competitive travel times for downtown to downtown connections” and potentially reduce travel times by up to 90 minutes on some routes.
There is currently no direct line connecting the Toronto-Quebec corridor so a high-speed rail system like this has the potential to transform travel and productivity for the affected regions, “where population growth is expected to rise by an additional six million residents over the next two decades,” according to the letter to the minister.
The project was first proposed in 2016 by VIA Rail and a commitment to the project was announced by the federal government in 2021.
In 2023, VIA HFR appointed Martin Imbleau as CEO of the new Crown corporation. Since then, Imbleau has been working with boards of trade and chambers of commerce as well as the cities’ mayors and Indigenous nations to get the project up and running.
Imbleau spoke with OBJ earlier this year about the project, where he outlined next steps. In the coming weeks, VIA HFR will choose from a pre-selected consortium of companies that will help develop the project. From there, development and engineering plans will need to be drawn up. Imbleau emphasized the importance of the support and participation of Indigenous communities in the development stage of the project.
The federal government first projected completion for as early as 2030, but that projection has been pushed to the mid-2030s, according to the project’s website.
