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What the Senate Heard — and What the Government Could Not Answer
— a plain-language summary of Senate testimony on ALTO’s expropriation powers, landowner rights, and project credibility
Bill C-15 is the federal budget implementation bill that contains the High-Speed Rail Network Act — the legislation that grants ALTO sweeping new expropriation powers and asserts federal jurisdiction over the entire rail corridor. It passed the House of Commons in February 2026 and is now before the Senate.
This brief draws exclusively from primary Senate sources: what government officials, ALTO’s own CEO, and independent experts said — on the record — to Senate committees. It is organized around the issues most directly relevant to municipalities, rural landowners, and communities in Eastern Ontario crossed by the proposed southern corridor.
The overarching finding: officials confirmed that expropriation powers will come into force before any corridor has been defined, before landowners receive legal notice, and before an environmental assessment has been conducted.
The Expropriation Paradox: Powers Before a Corridor Exists
The single most consequential finding across all Senate proceedings is that Bill C-15’s expropriation provisions will come into force — once the bill passes the Senate and receives Royal Assent — before any corridor has been defined. This was confirmed by multiple government officials on the Senate record.
What Officials Said on the Record
Dir. General
CEO
“The corridor is not quite defined as of yet, but there must be a corridor in mind… Why have we not given notice to landowners that they might be affected? What happens if some property owners decide to develop their land — building a new barn for cattle — and then find out later that they weren’t supposed to do that?”
Senator Quinn’s question received no satisfactory answer. Imbleau’s response was that consultation “starting in January” would reach out to landowners in “a fairly large region.” This is a public engagement process, not a legal notice mechanism — and it is the only process that has occurred. Landowners along the corridor have therefore received informal public outreach, but not legal notice, while the bill that will constrain their property rights is still before Parliament.
What This Means for Landowners
Prof. Anneke Smit (University of Windsor, Faculty of Law) confirmed the practical consequence: the Right of First Refusal registered on properties for eight years, and the four-year prohibition on improvements, “will impact land values and landowners’ abilities to sell and to improve their properties.” She concluded: “It is, in my view, too early to put these restrictions on properties” before there is clarity about the route. Senate briefs
- The Treasury Board Secretariat compared C-15’s provisions against 15 existing Acts with regulatory exemption powers
- Every comparable provision carries: an explicit duration limit of 2–10 years; a public interest test tied to innovation or testing; and transparency mechanisms (Canada Gazette publication, parliamentary tabling, or mandatory public comment)
- The closest rail-sector comparator — the Railway Safety Act — caps exemptions at six months for testing purposes
- C-15’s eight-year Right of First Refusal and four-year improvement prohibition exceed the duration of every comparable provision, attach before a route is defined, and include none of the transparency mechanisms in the government’s own list of precedents
- The Supreme Court’s 1997 Dell Holdings decision establishes that expropriation power “should be strictly construed in favour of those whose rights have been affected.” C-15 would invert this principle by imposing restrictions before affected parties can even be identified
Landowner Recourse: A Letter to the Minister
Senator Aucoin asked directly what steps are available to landowners who object to expropriation. Transport Canada ADM Vincent Robitaille’s complete answer:
“The act provides a process whereby owners can submit their objections in writing to the minister. These will be considered before expropriations are finalized.”
This is what C-15 proposes as the entirety of the recourse mechanism once it passes: a written submission to the minister — in place of the formal independent hearing process that currently exists in law.
- What C-15 would remove: The existing hearing processes in the federal Expropriation Act — independent proceedings that currently provide an opportunity to shed light on, and sometimes correct, proposed expropriations. These protections are still in force today.
- What C-15 would replace them with: A written objection submitted to the minister — with no requirement for the minister to accept or respond before expropriation proceeds
- Prof. Smit’s assessment: The hearing processes C-15 proposes to eliminate “may make the project stronger in the long run.” Their proposed elimination is a substantive reduction in landowner rights confirmed on the committee record — one that has not yet taken effect
For rural landowners in Eastern Ontario, this is a critical window. Under the existing federal Expropriation Act, hearings before an independent body are still available as a matter of law. Bill C-15 — which has passed the House and is now before the Senate — would eliminate those hearings entirely. The Senate has not yet voted.
Farm Severance: Tractors Cannot Cross High-Speed Rail
Senator Miville-Dechêne raised the practical farm access question: tractors and farm machinery cannot cross high-speed rail at grade. Robitaille confirmed the global technical reality of HSR infrastructure:
“No same-level crossing of tracks is permitted, not by tractors or cars. At all intersections, one kind of traffic travels below and the other above, at significant cost.”
“Alto and Cadence will work to limit land severance situations to the extent possible, to spare people a lot of wasted time. In cases like these, we would have to look into purchasing residual land to avoid problems.”
- Every road allowance and farm lane crossing the corridor requires a grade separation structure — confirmed by Transport Canada
- The cost of grade separations is borne by the project — but disruption, delay, and access limitation during construction falls on the landowner
- The obligation to build grade separations is not legally secured in C-15
- The obligation to purchase residual severed land is not legally secured in C-15
- ALTO’s own consultation materials describe the southern corridor as running through “higher-value farmland” than the northern option, meaning the aggregate number of required grade separations and potential landlocked parcels is higher on the southern alignment
The Environmental Assessment Agency Could Not Answer Basic Questions
IAAC Director General Stéphanie Johnson’s testimony before the TRCM (December 9, 2025) is documented in the official transcript. Senator Dasko asked whether non-federal-jurisdiction environmental impacts — farmlands, communities, natural habitats — would be assessed. The following table reproduces the full exchange from the Senate record. Senate transcript
| Senator’s Question | IAAC Director General’s Answer |
|---|---|
| Will non-federal environmental impacts (farmland, habitats, communities) be assessed? | “I feel like I can’t answer that. I’m sorry. I can come back to the committee with that.” |
| Are those impacts going to be studied at all? | “I’m sorry, I don’t want to give that impression at all. I feel like it’s a bit beyond what I might be able to explain today.” |
| What obstacles might arise — wetlands, for example? | “It’s really far too early in the process to speak of launching an impact assessment.” |
| Do you anticipate environmental impacts on farmland? | “It’s too early in the process for me to offer an opinion on specific impacts anywhere along the route.” |
| Has provincial involvement in the assessment been arranged? | “It’s still too soon to talk about provincial involvement.” |
- Johnson confirmed in her opening remarks that “land acquisition, including expropriation, can proceed before completion of the impact assessment” under the Impact Assessment Act for this project
- This procedural inversion — expropriation before environmental assessment — is not an oversight; it is a statutory design built into Bill C-15 and confirmed by the IAAC on the Senate record
- For communities in Eastern Ontario, this means landowners could receive expropriation notices before any environmental assessment of the route’s impacts on the Frontenac Arch Biosphere, Cataraqui watershed, agricultural drainage systems, or species at risk has been completed, initiated, or even scoped
Provincial Jurisdiction: Neither Ontario nor Quebec Has Agreed
Bill C-15 uses the federal declaratory power under s. 92(10)(c) of the Constitution Act to assert federal jurisdiction over all HSR segments, including those wholly within one province. Department of Justice Canada counsel Josée Thibodeau confirmed this effectively transfers provincial jurisdiction to the federal government for each segment, even intra-provincial ones.
Canada
Dir. General
- Neither Ontario nor Quebec had officially agreed to the jurisdictional transfer asserted by C-15
- The Impact Assessment Agency had not determined how provincial environmental assessment processes — including Quebec’s BAPE process — would be integrated or replaced
- Prof. Ika warned that legal challenges from provinces or municipalities unhappy with the jurisdictional framework are “for sure” likely, and that “it may take time to settle this kind of situation”
VIA Rail and Bypassed Communities: No Plan on the Record
Kingston, Belleville, Brockville, and Cobourg currently have VIA Rail service. None is planned to receive an ALTO station. The question of what happens to their rail access was raised across multiple Senate proceedings. No satisfactory answer has been provided.
Canada
- “A date to be determined in the future” is not a plan or a commitment
- “Consolidated” means brought under unified management — it does not mean maintained
- No funding framework for continued legacy service to bypassed communities was described
Prof. Matti Siemiatycki (Infrastructure Institute, University of Toronto) told the NFFN that after HSR opens, conventional rail subsidies per trip will increase because overall ridership on the legacy corridor will fall — making continued service to bypassed communities more expensive, not less. Siemiatycki submission
ALTO’s formal written follow-up to the NFFN (March 10, 2026) lists “service to new communities, expanding access beyond major cities” among project benefits — referring to the new stations at Peterborough, Trois-Rivières, and Laval. Kingston, Belleville, Brockville, and Cobourg are not mentioned. Alto written follow-up
Costs, Ridership, and the Credibility Gap
Independent academic analysis presented to the Senate across two committees establishes a significant gap between ALTO’s public projections and what the evidence supports.
Prof. Ahmed El-Geneidy (McGill, TRAM lab) found respondents willing to pay only $20 above current VIA prices. His modelling found this fare level would not recover capital or operating costs over fifty years. El-Geneidy stated directly to the Senate: “Don’t expect any public transit project to be self-sustainable in the long term.” This directly contradicts ALTO’s written claim to the NFFN that the project will “eliminate ongoing operating subsidies to VIA Rail in the Toronto–Québec City Corridor.” El-Geneidy submission
Siemiatycki (NFFN) identified the most relevant international comparators for Canadian conditions as California High-Speed Rail and HS2 — both approaching or exceeding $250 million per kilometre. ALTO’s implied cost range of $60–90 million per kilometre is 2.8 to 4.2 times lower than these comparators. Siemiatycki submission
Prof. Ika placed the odds of on-time, on-budget delivery at 1 in 2, noting that Bent Flyvbjerg’s global research finds rail projects average 39% cost overrun and 39% ridership overestimation. Ika brief
- Siemiatycki called explicitly for an independent business case before construction approval — as of March 2026, no such document has been released
- The $4 billion co-development commitment creates what Prof. Ika described as political lock-in before a formal “decision to build”
- ALTO’s ridership model relies on confidential VIA Rail data — meaning the numbers “cannot be independently validated” without access to inputs that have not been disclosed
Oversight Gaps and Governance Risks
Prof. Lavagnon Ika (Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa) applied his megaproject governance framework to C-15 and identified structural risks that the Senate record documents but does not resolve. Ika brief
- No independent Quality Assurance mechanism: No Norway-style independent QA function at the federal level; no mandatory external review before funding tranches are released
- No Distributional Impact Statement: No statutory requirement to demonstrate, before spending, who bears costs and who receives benefits by region
- No staged go/no-go gates: The $4 billion co-development commitment front-loads economic benefits to the Cadence consortium through design fees before full public scrutiny
- Pre-approval may produce the delays it seeks to avoid: Ika warned that “the concentration of authority and pre-approval mechanisms may reduce transparency and weaken independent oversight,” provoking legal challenges, social opposition, and delays the bill was designed to prevent
- Municipalities not addressed: Prof. Smit noted that municipal stakeholders have not been discussed in Senate proceedings at all
“Speed matters, but fast-track at any cost risks undermining legitimacy, environmental protection, Indigenous rights and long-term project value.”
What the Senate Record Now Establishes
The following findings are documented across multiple Senate proceedings and can be cited directly by communities and landowners in the ALTO public consultation. Each is sourced to an official primary record.
| Finding | Senate Source |
|---|---|
| No corridor has been defined | Jenkyn (PSPC) · TRCM Dec 9, 2025 |
| C-15 would allow expropriation to precede the impact assessment | Johnson (IAAC) · TRCM Dec 9, 2025 |
| C-15 proposes: landowner recourse is a written submission to the minister — independent hearings would be eliminated | Robitaille (TC) · TRCM Dec 9, 2025 |
| Every intersection requires a grade separation; residual land buyout is aspirational only | Robitaille (TC) · TRCM Dec 9, 2025 |
| Provincial governments have not agreed to the jurisdictional transfer | Robitaille (TC) · TRCM Dec 9, 2025 |
| Provincial involvement in impact assessment is undetermined | Johnson (IAAC) · TRCM Dec 9, 2025 |
| VIA service continuity for bypassed communities has no funded plan | Robitaille (TC) · TRCM Dec 9, 2025 |
| Ridership projections are inflated — independent estimate less than half ALTO’s figure | El-Geneidy (McGill) · TRCM Dec 9, 2025 |
| Project will not be financially self-sustaining; ALTO’s subsidy-elimination claim is unsupported | El-Geneidy (McGill) · TRCM Dec 9, 2025 |
| C-15 property restrictions exceed duration of every comparable Canadian legal precedent | TBS Annex 1 · Dec 9, 2025 |
| No independent business case exists before the $4B commitment | Siemiatycki (U of T) · NFFN Dec 2025 |
| No distributional impact analysis required before spending | Ika (U of Ottawa) · TRCM Dec 9, 2025 |
| Odds of on-time, on-budget delivery: 1 in 2 | Ika (U of Ottawa) · TRCM Dec 9, 2025 |
Submissions to the ALTO consultation close April 24, 2026. Written submissions citing specific Senate record evidence create a formal, documented record that is harder to dismiss than general opposition. Each finding above is sourced to a primary document you can link or quote directly.
Submit to ALTO’s consultation — Deadline April 24, 2026 →All Sources — Direct Senate Links
Analysis by the Alto HSR Citizen Research Initiative. All quotations are drawn from primary Senate sources as cited. Independent and non-partisan.