Tag: accountability

  • A deal that lost its other half

    The Billy Bishop Reversal
    A Deal That Lost Its Other Half

    Reporting says Ontario agreed to go along with ALTO in exchange for the Billy Bishop airport expansion. Ottawa has now pulled back from the airport — so if that account is right, what is holding up the province’s side?

    The short version

    A newspaper report describes an informal trade behind the scenes: the province would support the ALTO high-speed rail line, and in return Ottawa would let Billy Bishop airport expand. Ottawa has now pulled back from the airport. If the report is right, the reason Ontario was cooperating with ALTO has just disappeared — and that matters for every community along the route.

    What the reporting says

    In late July 2026, the Toronto Star reported that Ottawa’s decision to drop the Billy Bishop airport expansion was tied to a behind-the-scenes understanding: the province would go along with ALTO, and in exchange the airport expansion would proceed. One source put it plainly — “It’s Billy Bishop for Alto, that was always the understanding.”1 The paper reported the Premier and Prime Minister had even shaken hands on it. It also noted that the high-speed line — a 300 km/h train cutting through farmland in rural Ontario — has always been a hard sell to the province’s own members whose ridings it crosses.

    A private handshake can’t be independently confirmed, and the account rests on unnamed sources. But it was reported in detail, and it fits how difficult the corridor has been for the province to defend.

    What changed

    Ottawa has now pulled back from the airport expansion. In his July 24 statement, the Minister of Transport said the government’s focus is now only on the already-approved safety work, that Toronto voices would shape any future plans, and that it would not pursue anything that harms treasured public spaces, raises noise, damages the environment, or blocks housing — the effects opponents of the expansion had raised.2 The government cited more than 87,000 public responses;2 the Toronto Star reported that about 87 per cent were opposed.1 Some call the decision a cancellation, others a pause1 — but either way, the province is left holding, at best, a promise that has been put on hold. Whatever it was reportedly getting in return for supporting ALTO is, for now, gone.

    Why this matters for the corridor

    ALTO’s Ontario stretch can’t be built by the federal government on its own. It needs the province and local municipalities to cooperate on the hard, unglamorous parts: assembling land, approving where the line crosses roads, relocating utilities, and separating the tracks from local traffic. If that cooperation was really a trade — support given in exchange for the airport — then taking the airport away removes the reason for the support. That uncertainty lands squarely on the towns, farms, and landowners in the train’s path, who still don’t know whether or how the project moves ahead.

    One standard, for everyone

    Ottawa reconsidered the airport by listening: it counted the public responses, weighed the opposition, and set conditions rather than pressing ahead. Yet the same July 24 statement reaffirmed ALTO as part of the government’s integrated plan for the Greater Toronto Area, alongside the Pearson expansion.2 One waterfront project was reshaped by public feedback; the far larger rail project was restated in the same document without reference to any. Communities along the ALTO route raised their objections too, through the project’s own consultation, which closed on 24 April 2026. No comparable count of responses received, or of concerns raised, has been published for that consultation. If 87,000 responses were enough to change course on one waterfront project, the people who live along a much larger one are entitled to know how their objections are being weighed.

    Questions worth asking

    • Does Ontario still support ALTO now that the thing it was reportedly promised is off the table?
    • If the province’s support was tied to the airport, what is it tied to now?
    • Will the communities along the corridor get the same fair hearing that stopped the airport expansion?

    None of this is about one political party. Unease with ALTO crosses party lines. The Star reports the line has been a hard sell to the province’s own members whose ridings it crosses. This is a straightforward question of accountability: if the reported understanding was what it appeared to be, one public decision has knocked a leg out from under another, and the people in the corridor’s path deserve to know where that leaves them.

    How to read this page

    The trade described here is reported by the Toronto Star on unnamed sources. Neither government has confirmed it, and this page does not treat it as established. Everything that follows from it is written conditionally, because that is all the evidence supports.

    Everything else is quoted from the two named sources below and can be checked there: the Minister’s 24 July statement and its conditions, the figure of more than 87,000 responses, the reported 87 per cent opposition, and the reaffirmation of ALTO in the same statement. Where something has not been published, this page says so rather than inferring it, and makes no claim about anyone’s motives.

    Sources

    1. 1Robert Benzie, Ryan Tumilty and Mark Ramzy, “‘Disappointed’ Doug Ford spoke privately with Mark Carney after decision blocking Billy Bishop expansion,” Toronto Star, July 27, 2026.
    2. 2Hon. Steven MacKinnon, Minister of Transport, Statement on Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, July 24, 2026.
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative Independent, non-partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Québec City high-speed rail corridor citizenresearch.ca

  • Bound before briefed

    City of Kingston: Bound Before Briefed

    Britain spent a decade learning what happens when councils sign confidentiality agreements with a high-speed rail promoter. The lessons were on the record. Kingston signed on 10 July, three days before this brief reached councillors.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Governance and Transparency Brief · Published July 2026 · Updated following the July 10 signing
    ⚠ Update · The agreement has been signed

    This brief sets out the questions Kingston City Council should have asked before entering a non-disclosure agreement with ALTO. By the time it reached councillors, on Monday, July 13, the agreement had already been signed — the Whig-Standard reported that the City signed on Friday, July 10, and the signing became public on July 14. Whig-Standard

    The document’s title turns out to be literal. Councillors were bound on the Friday and briefed on the Monday — bound by an agreement the City says applies to them personally, three days before the questions below were put in front of them. The brief did not arrive too early to matter. It arrived after the decision it was meant to inform.

    Two facts from that reporting change the picture materially. First, a City spokesperson confirmed that the agreement binds city staff and councillors alike — every person who receives technical information from ALTO. Second, asked whether the City had a choice, the same spokesperson said: “This is not optional.”

    The analysis below is the brief as sent to councillors, unchanged. The questions it raises were answerable before Friday. That they are printed here after the signing, rather than asked before it, is the point.

    Critical Finding

    Of the five questions this brief puts to Council, one has already been answered, and answered badly. The agreement binds elected members, not merely officers. A councillor who receives technical information about the corridor cannot discuss it with the constituents whose land that corridor may cross. The remaining four — whether the agreement expires, what precisely it covers, whether MFIPPA and open-meeting obligations are expressly preserved, and what ALTO would actually have withheld without it — remain unanswered on the public record.

    A second finding sits underneath the first. ALTO describes these agreements as instruments that enable two-way data sharing and productive collaboration. HS2 Ltd, facing the same criticism in Britain, said its agreements were mutual and entered into by consent. The City of Kingston says the agreement was not optional. A contract that one party had no choice but to sign is not a collaboration. Both characterisations cannot be true, and it is the City — not the critics — that has contradicted the promoter.

    Kingston’s neighbours faced the identical request and treated it as a decision. Two eastern Ontario counties have now refused ALTO’s confidentiality agreement outright, both unanimously, both on the public record — the United Counties of Prescott and Russell in May, and the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry on June 15. Frontenac County voted formally on April 15 to oppose the proposed corridors through the county. Whether Kingston’s agreement was ever put to its own elected representatives — by motion, in open or closed session — has not been established on the public record.

    The most important fact in this brief is the one that follows from that. SDG refused the agreement and then published ALTO’s presentation to the public. The choice Kingston was offered — sign and be informed, or refuse and be ignorant — is not a real choice. A council next door declined to sign and released the material anyway.

    Download
    City of Kingston: Bound Before Briefed — Full Brief (PDF)
    The briefing note circulated to Kingston City Council, reproduced as issued, with a dated note recording that the agreement was signed before it arrived. Ten-minute read.
    Download PDF
    What was signed

    “This is not optional”

    The agreement was executed on Friday, July 10, between the City of Kingston and ALTO, the Crown corporation developing the corridor. ALTO’s account of why is straightforward and, in its own terms, reasonable: planning work is not final; early concepts, technical analysis and emerging ideas are still being refined; and sharing preliminary material without its full context could give the impression that decisions have already been made. Confidentiality agreements, the corporation says, are used widely in the infrastructure industry and structure these discussions so that evolving information can be shared. Whig-Standard

    The Mayor’s defence follows the same line. Such agreements are common in major infrastructure planning; they allow technical information to be shared so that municipalities can provide informed input; the agreement is not an endorsement of any particular route or station location; and the City remains committed to transparency and will share information publicly when it is able to.

    Set against that framing, the City spokesperson’s own words do a great deal of work. The agreement applies to all city staff and councillors who receive technical information from ALTO. It was required in order for the City to receive any technical information at all. And it was not optional.

    A confidentiality agreement that one party had no choice but to sign is not a collaboration. It is a condition of entry.

    This is the distinction the British record turns on, and it is worth being precise about it. The objection is not that confidential material was shared confidentially. It is that information was withheld until silence was promised — that access to the facts was made conditional on a commitment not to use them. That is not a description of HS2. It is now, on the City’s own account, a description of Kingston.

    Part One · The mechanism

    Access conditioned on silence

    In Britain, councils were not handed material and then asked to protect the commercially sensitive parts of it. They were told they could see nothing at all unless they signed first. Many were required to sign before they could engage with HS2 Ltd on the questions that mattered most locally — where stations might go, how they would be designed, and which route the promoter preferred. Warwickshire County Council could not receive early design updates until it had signed. New Civil Engineer Warwickshire World

    A council’s capacity to scrutinise the promoter is made conditional on a promise not to tell the people it represents what that scrutiny has revealed.

    The council does not become better informed in any way it can act upon. It becomes better informed and simultaneously disabled from using the information in the one forum where a council is supposed to act: in public, on the record, in front of the residents whose homes and farms lie in the corridor.

    That is the general case. In Kingston it now has a specific and uncomfortable form. Because the agreement binds councillors rather than officers alone, a member of Council who is briefed on the alignment cannot discuss what they have learned with the constituent whose property it crosses. The representative becomes an insider. Whatever else the agreement achieves, it removes from thirteen elected people the ability to do the thing they were elected to do.

    Part Two · The scale, and the creep

    Four agreements became three hundred and thirty-nine

    Freedom of Information disclosures eventually forced HS2 Ltd to reveal how far the practice had spread. The progression was four agreements in 2012–13, ten in 2014, twenty-seven in 2015, thirty-four in 2016, seventy-one in 2017, and one hundred and twelve in 2018. New Civil Engineer

    4
    confidentiality agreements signed in 2012–13, at the outset
    HS2 Ltd, via FOI
    112
    signed in 2018 alone, as the practice took hold
    HS2 Ltd, via FOI
    339
    bodies bound, by the figure cited in the House of Lords
    Hansard

    HS2 Ltd then resisted disclosing who had signed for eighteen months, releasing the list of 253 organisations only after the Information Commissioner intervened. A further thirty-eight agreements with individuals were never named. By the end, the signatories included dozens of councils, the Health and Safety Executive, the National Trust, Historic England, and five universities.

    The circle of people who could speak freely about a public project — funded by the public, running through the public’s communities — had been drawn so tightly that supporters of the scheme in the House of Lords questioned why so many organisations needed to be bound at all.

    The creep has already begun here

    Reporting on the Prescott and Russell decision confirms that ALTO requires every landholder who permits field survey access to sign a non-disclosure agreement, not only municipalities. The first agreement is never the last. It establishes the template, the precedent, and the expectation — for this municipality, for the next one down the corridor, for landowners, consultants and agencies, and for every subsequent phase of the project. Tribune-Express

    Part Three · The terms

    Twenty-six of twenty-eight had no end date

    Of the twenty-eight English local authorities identified, the Town and Country Planning Association found that twenty-six had agreements with no end date. New Civil Engineer

    No sunset clause. No automatic release on publication of the environmental assessment. No expiry when the route was confirmed and the commercial sensitivity had evaporated. Silence in perpetuity, over material that in most cases became public anyway — simply later, and on the promoter’s timetable rather than the community’s.

    This is the single most consequential drafting failure in the entire British record, and it is also the easiest to prevent. An officer negotiating in good faith, focused on getting the data flowing, will not necessarily notice that the agreement never expires. Whether Kingston’s agreement contains an expiry date is not, at the time of writing, on the public record. It is a one-word answer, and the City can give it today.

    Part Four · Both sides, fairly stated

    The promoter’s case, and what the record shows

    Nothing in this brief argues that no confidentiality is ever warranted. The argument is narrower: the terms matter enormously, the English terms were bad, and they were bad in ways that were entirely avoidable if identified in advance.

    What the promoter saysWhat the British record shows
    The agreements are mutual and entered into by consent. ALTO describes instruments that enable two-way data sharing and support productive collaboration on planning. The City of Kingston’s own spokesperson says the agreement was not optional and was required to receive any technical information at all. HS2 Ltd made the identical “mutual and consensual” claim about agreements that councils could not decline without being cut off.
    Confidentiality protects residents from unnecessary blight and confusion. Sharing early information without full context could suggest decisions have been made. Note the shape of the argument: the secrecy is offered as a protection for the affected. It is worth asking whether residents in the corridor, given the choice, would prefer to be protected from knowing. In Britain, the discovery of the agreements produced anger, not relief.
    These agreements are common in major infrastructure. They allow municipalities to give informed input. They are common. That is the finding, not the defence. The Raynsford Review examined precisely this common practice and concluded that it corroded public trust in the project it was meant to protect.
    The agreement is not an endorsement of any route or station. The City will share information publicly when it is able to. “When we are able to” is the operative phrase, and its meaning is set by a document the public has not seen. If the agreement has no expiry, the answer is: at the promoter’s discretion, indefinitely.

    The most honest defence of signing came, in Britain, from Doncaster. The council signed because it relied on HS2’s data to scrutinise and challenge the design; without signing, exposing the route’s damaging effects would have been harder still and might have produced more blight rather than less. Doncaster Free Press That is not a foolish argument, and it should not be caricatured. It is the argument of a body that has accepted the promoter’s framing of the available choices — sign and be informed, or refuse and be ignorant. Whether that framing was tested is not something the public record shows.

    Prescott and Russell tested it. So did Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry. Both refused — and neither is, on the available evidence, less informed about ALTO than Kingston is. One of them has published the promoter’s presentation. Kingston cannot.

    Part Five · The independent verdicts

    What Britain concluded, in public, before Kingston signed

    The Raynsford Review (Town and Country Planning Association, 2018)

    Led by a former construction minister, this review of the English planning system found that the agreements undermine public trust in major infrastructure. It criticised the widespread use of confidentiality agreements by the HS2 company and identified a corrosive public sense that planning no longer protects people’s interests. It found that the agreements created real anger among local politicians and deeper resentment in affected communities once their existence came to light.

    Raynsford’s line — the most useful distinction in the literature

    Raynsford did not oppose confidentiality as such. He accepted the case for it where competing route options are under assessment and public knowledge could inflate land prices — and opposed it where it undermines public trust or may shield inappropriate relationships between developers and those making decisions. The test is not whether confidentiality is ever justified. It is whether this confidentiality, on these terms, for this long, is.

    The House of Lords — criticism from the project’s own supporters

    Baroness Kramer, a consistent advocate of HS2, argued that the presumption must always be transparency, with confidentiality as the exception, and that the slow release of information on cost, land and compensation had harmed the project and generated suspicion. Lord Berkeley proposed an independent assessor to review every HS2 confidentiality agreement against a presumption of public accountability. The people who most wanted HS2 built were among the loudest voices warning that the secrecy was destroying its public licence.

    The culture did not stay in its lane

    HS2 Ltd paid roughly £1.67 million in settlement agreements to forty-eight former employees from April 2016, with confidentiality clauses written in; a number of whistleblowers were among them. The company also redacted the names of attendees from its board minutes, against the Information Commissioner’s stated presumption in favour of naming those acting in a professional capacity. In the English record, confidentiality practice did not stay confined to route data. New Civil Engineer

    Part Six · The neighbours

    The same request, refused twice next door

    ALTO has made materially the same approach to municipalities across the corridor: access to technical material, in exchange for a confidentiality agreement, plus permission to enter municipal land for field survey. What distinguishes Kingston is not the request. It is the response, and the process by which the response was reached.

    United Counties of Prescott and Russell — refused, May 2026

    All eight mayors on the UCPR council voted against a resolution that would have granted ALTO access to counties’ land for survey work and committed the Counties to a non-disclosure agreement. Each mayor declared their position on a registered vote. Warden Mario Zanth, mayor of Clarence-Rockland, directed the CAO to inform ALTO that the council did not want the corporation on its territory, having refused both the confidentiality agreement and land access. Zanth’s stated objection was that the corporation demanded secrecy before it would disclose the technical details municipalities were asking about — the chemistry of de-icing fluids and the risk to wells, the electricity supply, and other questions of direct local consequence. Tribune-Express ONFR

    United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry — refused, June 15, 2026

    SDG Counties Council unanimously rejected both ALTO’s request to access counties-owned land for environmental and technical study and its request that SDG sign a non-disclosure agreement — an agreement that would have prohibited councillors and staff from discussing with the public any details of their meetings and communications with the corporation. Council was given three options: full access, partial access, or none. It chose none, without further debate. North Glengarry Mayor Jamie MacDonald grounded his objection in accountability, saying of the agreement: “Here they’re telling us we can’t share any information in them.” The Review

    Frontenac County — a formal, public vote on the corridor, April 15, 2026

    Frontenac County Council formally voted to oppose the proposed high-speed rail corridors through the county, favouring routes along existing rail lines or the Highway 401 corridor. The resolution cited disruption to residential areas, agricultural lands and environmentally sensitive features; impacts on municipal infrastructure including road closures; risks to emergency response times; and uncertainty about the long-term financial implications for municipalities. Council supported a Kingston stop and called for no expropriation west of Ottawa until the Ottawa–Montreal segment nears completion. County of Frontenac

    City of Kingston — signed July 10; the authorising process is not on the public record

    Whether the agreement was authorised by a motion of Council — in open session, or in closed session with a reporting-out resolution — or executed by staff under delegated signing authority without coming to Council at all, has not been established. The distinction is not academic. An agreement authorised by a recorded vote is a decision residents can argue with. One signed under delegated authority means the City bound itself, and its councillors, on a matter of plain public interest without the body accountable for that interest ever recording a view.

    The choice Kingston was offered is not a real choice

    The case for signing rests entirely on a premise: that a council which refuses the agreement is left in the dark. The City spokesperson put it plainly — the agreement was required in order to receive any technical information at all, and it was not optional.

    That premise has been tested next door, and it failed. SDG refused the agreement, refused land access, and then shared ALTO’s presentation with the public. From that published material, residents of SDG can now learn what ALTO intends: that field sampling across the corridor is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026 and will feed the impact assessment; that the surveys cover wetlands, forests, avian wildlife, and fish and wildlife habitat; that archaeology, cultural heritage, and “sensitive receptors” such as parks, schools and hospitals are treated as socio-economic components; and that noise, vibration, hydrogeology, soil quality and surface water are the physical components under examination. The Review

    A council that refused to sign has told its residents more about ALTO’s plans than a council that signed is now permitted to.

    This is not a rhetorical point. It is the whole argument, and it can be verified by anyone with a browser. The bargain Kingston accepted — silence in exchange for information — was offered on the premise that there was no alternative. Two neighbouring counties declined it, and one of them proceeded to put the promoter’s own material on the public record. The alternative existed. Kingston did not take it, and has not explained why.

    One further detail of timing deserves an answer. The Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus — the body through which these counties have been coordinating their response — was scheduled to discuss ALTO at a meeting in Kingston, in July. Kingston signed on July 10.

    The Initiative has written to Kingston city councillors asking a single question, answerable in one sentence: was the agreement authorised by resolution of Council, and if so, what is the resolution number and date — or was it executed under delegated authority, and under which by-law? We will publish the answer when we receive it, whatever it is.

    Part Seven · Where things stand

    Five questions, one answered

    These are the five questions the brief puts to Council. None is hostile. Each was answerable by staff in a sentence — before Friday. This is their status as of publication.

    Answered
    Who is bound — officers, or members? Both. The City confirms the agreement applies to all staff and councillors who receive technical information. This is the outcome the brief identifies as the most serious: an agreement that binds elected members converts representatives into insiders.
    Unanswered
    Does it expire? No sunset date has been disclosed. Twenty-six of the twenty-eight English councils signed agreements with no end date at all.
    Unanswered
    What, exactly, is covered? Whether the agreement is confined to genuinely commercial and personal information, or reaches route alignment, station siting, cost and community impact, has not been disclosed.
    Unanswered
    Are the statutory carve-outs express? Whether the agreement expressly preserves the City’s obligations under MFIPPA and the open-meeting provisions of the Municipal Act has not been disclosed. A municipality cannot lawfully contract out of those duties — but a poorly drafted agreement can create a chilling effect that operates as though it had.
    Unanswered
    What was actually being withheld without it? ALTO is a federal entity subject to the Access to Information Act. If the material behind the agreement is disclosable in due course regardless, the agreement is not buying confidentiality. It is buying delay.
    Outstanding
    How many of these has ALTO already signed? With municipalities, agencies, consultants and landowners — and on what terms? In Britain, that number was the story. It went from four to more than three hundred while nobody was counting.
    Every question above can be answered without disclosing a single confidential fact. The terms of an agreement are not the contents of an agreement.

    This is the point on which the whole matter turns, and it is worth stating without heat. Publishing the agreement — its duration, its scope, whom it binds, what it carves out — discloses nothing ALTO has a legitimate interest in protecting. It reveals no alignment, no cost, no property. A city genuinely committed to transparency, and unable to say more about the substance, can nonetheless say everything about the instrument. That it has not yet done so is a choice, and it is a choice the City can reverse this week.

    Download Full Brief
    City of Kingston: Bound Before Briefed (PDF)
    The briefing note as circulated to Kingston City Council — the full British record, the Ontario statutory overlay and the five questions in their original form, prefaced by a dated note on the 10 July signing
    Download PDF
    The English record

    The confidentiality did not protect HS2

    Refusal was never the only alternative to signature, and this brief did not urge it. An agreement that would survive scrutiny is time-limited — expiring on a defined public milestone; scope-limited — confined to genuinely commercial and personal information, with alignment, cost and impact data expressly excluded; statute-preserving — with explicit carve-outs for MFIPPA and open-meeting duties; officer-bound, not member-bound; and publicly disclosed — the agreement itself, if not its contents, placed on the public record.

    Every one of those five terms exists because HS2 lacked it. None of them costs the promoter anything to which it is entitled. Four of the five can still be secured by amendment, and the fifth — publication of the instrument — requires nothing from ALTO at all.

    The English record offers one final observation, and it is not a partisan one. The confidentiality did not protect the project. It corroded HS2’s public licence, hardened the opposition, and left even the scheme’s allies defending a company against the impression that it had something to conceal. Kingston has signed. It has not yet explained. Those are different things, and only one of them is now beyond recall.

    How to read this brief

    Every figure and finding about HS2 is quoted from the sources listed below and can be checked there: the yearly counts of confidentiality agreements, the 253 organisations named after the Information Commissioner intervened, the 26 of 28 English councils with no end date, the settlement figures, and the Raynsford Review and House of Lords findings. The Kingston facts — the 10 July signing, that the agreement binds councillors as well as staff, and the City’s statement that it was not optional — are as reported by the Whig-Standard.

    The statutory points about MFIPPA, the Municipal Act and the Access to Information Act are research, not legal advice, and are offered as questions for the City Solicitor rather than as conclusions. Where something has not been published or answered, this brief says so rather than inferring it, and makes no claim about anyone’s motives in signing.

    Sources

    Primary documents and reporting

    1.
    Elliot Ferguson, “Kingston signs non-disclosure agreement for high-speed rail talks,” The Kingston Whig-Standard, July 14, 2026. thewhig.com
    2.
    “UCPR denies ALTO access to lands, rejects request for NDA,” Tribune-Express, reporting the United Counties of Prescott and Russell council session of May 27, 2026. tribune-express.ca
    3.
    “TGV : Prescott-Russell bloque Alto et refuse de signer une entente de confidentialité,” ONFR / TFO, May 2026 — carries Warden Mario Zanth’s directive to the CAO and his stated reasons. onfr.tfo.org
    4.
    James Morgan, “SDG Council rejects Alto request for land access and NDA,” The Review, June 23, 2026 — reporting the unanimous SDG Counties Council decision of June 15, the terms of the proposed agreement, and the public release of ALTO’s presentation. thereview.ca
    5.
    County of Frontenac, “Council votes to oppose Alto routes through Frontenac County,” April 15, 2026. frontenaccounty.ca
    6.
    “Exclusive: HS2 ramps up use of gagging orders,” New Civil Engineer, July 1, 2019 — the year-by-year progression of agreements and the TCPA finding that 26 of 28 local authority agreements had no end date. newcivilengineer.com
    7.
    “Revealed: the 253 companies and public bodies to sign HS2 gagging orders,” New Civil Engineer, November 16, 2020 — the signatory list released after the Information Commissioner’s intervention. newcivilengineer.com
    8.
    “Exclusive: HS2 paid £1.67m to silence ex-employees,” New Civil Engineer, October 14, 2019. newcivilengineer.com
    9.
    Nick Raynsford, Planning 2020: Final Report of the Raynsford Review of Planning in England, Town and Country Planning Association, November 2018. Reported context on the HS2 confidentiality agreements: Warwickshire World
    10.
    Christian Wolmar, “HS2 likes to keep things secret,” December 2020 — carries the Raynsford distinction between legitimate and illegitimate confidentiality, and the board-minute redactions. christianwolmar.co.uk
    11.
    House of Lords debate on HS2 confidentiality agreements — contributions of Baroness Kramer and Lord Berkeley, Hansard. Hansard record
    12.
    “Doncaster Council signed non-disclosure agreement with HS2 bosses,” Doncaster Free Press — the fullest published statement of a council’s reasons for signing. doncasterfreepress.co.uk
    13.
    Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. M.56; Municipal Act, 2001, S.O. 2001, c. 25, s. 239 (open meetings); Access to Information Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. A-1. Statutory points in this brief are offered as questions for the City Solicitor, not as legal conclusions.
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  Governance and Transparency Brief  ·  July 2026
    Independent, non-partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail corridor.

  • Alto accountability

    What We Know About ALTO’s Reporting and Accountability

    A $60–90 billion Crown project, governed under the same regime as Canada Post.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Governance Brief · Published May 7, 2026 · Senate Finance Committee hearing on Bill C-15: February 4, 2026
    Critical Finding

    ALTO was created by Order-in-Council in 2022, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of VIA Rail. There is no enabling Act of Parliament establishing its mandate, powers, or reporting obligations. Under the Financial Administration Act, ALTO has been deemed a parent Crown corporation for reporting purposes — an administrative designation rather than an Act of Parliament. The framework that follows from this designation requires only summary-level reporting to Parliament, on Treasury Board’s timing.

    This was confirmed on the Senate record by senior Transport Canada officials before the Senate Finance Committee on February 4, 2026, and by the Minister of Transport in his appearance before the Senate Transport and Communications Committee in December 2025. The two descriptions match. This is not a partial picture — it is the entire accountability architecture for the largest federal infrastructure project of the post-war period.

    Download
    ALTO’s Accountability Architecture — Full Brief (PDF)
    Comprehensive analysis of ALTO’s governance, reporting obligations, contractual opacity, and the gaps documented in Senate testimony
    Download PDF
    The Structure

    Three structural facts

    Bill C-15 — the omnibus budget implementation legislation passed earlier this year — has granted ALTO the power to expropriate privately owned land for the high-speed rail corridor. The corporation that will exercise this power has the following structural characteristics, all of which are matters of public record.

    $60–90B
    public cost estimate, characterized by ALTO’s CEO as a working assumption
    Imbleau, May 2 interview
    0
    enabling Acts of Parliament establishing ALTO’s mandate, powers, or accountability
    created by Order-in-Council, 2022
    Same
    parliamentary reporting regime as Canada Post applies to ALTO
    FAA Part X, by deemed designation

    Most parent Crown corporations — Canada Post, the Bank of Canada, the CBC, VIA Rail’s older sister corporations — were established by their own enabling Acts. ALTO was not. It is a subsidiary of VIA Rail, which itself has no enabling legislation, and it was created through an Order-in-Council. The Financial Administration Act applies to it because the Order-in-Council deems it to apply, not because Parliament expressly decided that it should.

    The Senate Finance Committee asked about this directly on February 4. The Transport Canada witness confirmed each of these facts on the record.

    A further structural fact, less visible than the absence of an enabling Act but worth recording, is how ALTO’s directors come into office. Appendix 3 of the Corporate Plan Summary 2025–26 to 2029–30 confirms that directors are identified by the Board itself, recommended to the Minister of Transport, and then formally appointed by VIA Rail (ALTO’s sole shareholder) in consultation with the Minister. The Minister consults rather than appoints. The parent corporation appoints, but only candidates the subsidiary’s own board has nominated. ALTO’s directors are not Governor-in-Council appointees and do not appear in the public GIC appointments database. The board overseeing expropriation and $60–90 billion in proposed capital expenditure is, in appointment terms, substantially self-perpetuating.

    The Reporting Architecture

    What Parliament actually receives

    Under the Financial Administration Act, every parent Crown corporation submits a corporate plan and an operating budget to its responsible minister, who forwards approved versions to the Governor-in-Council. Parliament receives a summary of the corporate plan and a summary of the budget. Treasury Board determines when those summaries are tabled. Annual reports are required and tabled. Parent Crown corporations may be called before parliamentary committees when summoned.

    That is the regime under which a project with public cost estimates between $60 billion and $90 billion will be governed. The Transport Canada witness confirmed this framework before the Senate Finance Committee on February 4. The Minister of Transport described the same framework in his appearance before the Senate Transport and Communications Committee in December 2025.

    Two Officials, One Framework

    What senior officials have told the Senate

    Set side by side, the two appearances — the Minister of Transport before the Senate Transport and Communications Committee in December 2025, and senior Transport Canada officials before the Senate Finance Committee on February 4, 2026 — describe a single, consistent reporting architecture. The fact that two separate officials, before two separate Senate committees, described the same framework in the same terms is itself a finding. There is no additional layer the public has not been told about. What follows is the entire accountability architecture as senior officials understand it.

    Reporting MechanismWhat it Provides — in Officials’ Own Descriptions
    Crown corporation status. The legal foundation for ALTO’s existence and reporting obligations.ALTO is a wholly-owned subsidiary of VIA Rail, created by Order-in-Council in 2022. Because VIA Rail has no enabling Act, ALTO has none either. It is deemed a parent Crown corporation under the Financial Administration Act for reporting purposes. There is no legislated mandate, no statutory definition of its powers, and no statutory framework for its accountability. (Confirmed by the Minister before the Transport and Communications Committee, December 2025; and by the Transport Canada witness before the Finance Committee, February 2026.)
    Corporate plan. The forward-looking strategic and financial document setting out what the corporation intends to do.Submitted to the Minister of Transport for approval, then to the Governor-in-Council. Parliament receives a summary, not the full document. Treasury Board determines when the summary is tabled. The corporate plan itself has not been published.
    Operating budget. The annual financial plan, central to public accountability for a project of this expenditure scale.Submitted with the corporate plan. Parliament receives a summary, not the full budget. The summary’s level of detail is at the discretion of the responsible minister and Treasury Board.
    Annual report. The retrospective accountability document covering the previous fiscal year.Tabled in Parliament, as for all parent Crown corporations. Subject to the same disclosure standards as Canada Post and other established Crown corporations.
    Committee appearances. The mechanism by which Parliament can question ALTO directly.ALTO may be called before parliamentary committees, and has appeared before Senate committees on two occasions to date. Appearances are at the committee’s invitation; there is no scheduled or recurring appearance obligation specific to this project.
    The ALTO–Cadence contract. Described in February 2026 testimony as the project’s first layer of accountability, including a gain-share, pain-share mechanism between the Crown and its private partner.Not publicly available. When asked directly during the February hearing, the Transport Canada witness declined to provide the agreement, characterizing it as a commercial relationship.

    The accountability framework that exists is not a sub-set of a larger framework. It is, on the consistent testimony of the Minister and his senior officials, the framework. There is no additional statutory mechanism that has been mentioned, alluded to, or held in reserve. Parliament knows what it knows, and that knowledge is summary-level, on a schedule controlled by the executive.

    Currently Outside Public View

    What is not in the public domain

    Four documents that would, in a typical major federal infrastructure project, be in the public domain — or at least available to Parliament in unredacted form — are not currently available for ALTO.

    The ALTO–Cadence agreement

    The contract between ALTO and the consortium that will design and operate the high-speed rail system was described by the Transport Canada witness on February 4 as the project’s first layer of accountability, including a gain-share, pain-share mechanism between the Crown and its private partner. Asked directly whether the agreement is publicly available, the witness said it is not, characterizing it as a commercial relationship. The contract that the government has identified as the project’s primary accountability tool is itself unavailable for public scrutiny.

    The financing structure

    The public-private split has not been finalized. The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Air Canada have committed to equity participation in the Cadence consortium, but the magnitude of private investment relative to public funding has not been disclosed. ALTO’s chief executive has indicated that the published $60–90 billion cost figure is a working assumption rather than an estimate, with reliable cost estimates expected only in 2027 or 2028.

    The ALTO corporate plan

    The full corporate plan submitted to the Minister of Transport and the Governor-in-Council has not been published. Only summaries reach Parliament, on Treasury Board’s timing. For a project of this expenditure scale and physical footprint, the corporate plan is the central document setting out what the corporation will do, when, and at what cost. Its public unavailability is a structural feature of the FAA Part X regime, not an oversight.

    The operational governance instruments

    The Minister of Transport’s mandate letter to the Chair of ALTO, reproduced as Appendix 1 of the Corporate Plan Summary, identifies three operational accountability instruments by name: a Co-Development Charter setting out the government-approved parameters of the Initiative and including a Decision Matrix identifying “Designated Matters” that require ministerial or governmental approval before ALTO may proceed; a bilateral collaboration agreement between Transport Canada and ALTO; and a tripartite agreement among Transport Canada, ALTO, and VIA Rail. None of these three instruments is publicly available. The Financial Administration Act is published statute. The instruments that determine how it is applied to ALTO in operational practice are not.

    Two Clarifications from the February Hearing

    Corrections to the public record

    Two points emerged from the February hearing that correct widespread misunderstandings about the project’s regulatory posture. Both were stated directly by the Transport Canada witness on the Senate record.

    ALTO is not designated under Bill C-5

    Bill C-5 — the Building Canada Act — established the Major Projects Office and its expedited federal review framework. Public reporting and political messaging have at times implied that ALTO is a designated project under this regime. The Transport Canada witness corrected the record on February 4: ALTO has been determined to be a transformative strategy, but it is not currently designated under Bill C-5 as a major Crown project. Whether it will be designated remains undetermined. As of the February hearing, it is not.

    The corporation’s posture toward designation, however, is on the public record. Appendix 5 of the Corporate Plan Summary 2025–26 to 2029–30 identifies, as a formal risk-mitigation activity, “active representation to Government of Canada officials to ask to be designated a project of national interest under C-5.” The plan adds elsewhere that designation “would result in schedule changes and variances in Alto’s funding requirements.” The Crown corporation is on the record lobbying for a regulatory designation that would alter the impact assessment framework applicable to its own project. The channels, content, and recipients of that “active representation” are not disclosed.

    The federal declaration is designed to displace provincial environmental assessment

    Section 4 of the High-Speed Rail Network Act declares the railway to be for the general advantage of Canada. Asked why this declaration was necessary, the witness explained that without it, a provincial environmental impact assessment process might apply to segments wholly within one province — a regulatory uncertainty the legislation is designed to remove. The federal declaration is not, on the witness’s own account, a clarification of pre-existing federal jurisdiction. It is the active mechanism by which provincial environmental review of the corridor is foreclosed. For Eastern Ontario, the practical effect is direct: the Ontario Environmental Assessment Act will not apply to the southern corridor.

    Why This Matters

    Expropriation powers without proportionate oversight

    Bill C-15 has granted ALTO expropriation powers — the authority to take privately owned land for the high-speed rail corridor. The Initiative’s research on the bill has established that this power, on the bill’s terms, can be exercised before the federal Impact Assessment process is complete; that a temporary notice of prohibition of work can attach to land that has not yet been formally expropriated; and that the federal expropriation regime has been adjusted in this legislation to align more closely with provincial practice.

    A power of this magnitude, exercised on this scale, by a corporation without enabling legislation, with summary-only reporting on Treasury Board–controlled timing, with an undisclosed contract with a private consortium, is an architecture that needs strengthening — not because the officials involved are unprofessional, and not because the project is necessarily ill-conceived, but because expropriation of private property at this scale, with public expenditure at this scale, is precisely the situation that parliamentary oversight exists to govern.

    The C-15 powers are not where ALTO’s legislative posture ends. Appendix 5 of the Corporate Plan Summary 2025–26 to 2029–30, under the Land Acquisition and Real Property risk category, lists as risk-mitigation activities “work with the Government of Canada on options to streamline legislative measures by adapting them to the Alto project context and reality” and “provide more efficiency and predictability with regards to the expropriation process.” The corporation that has just received expropriation powers under C-15 has placed on the public record its intention to seek further legislative refinement of those powers. The channels and content of that engagement are not disclosed.

    The Senate Finance Committee’s questioning on February 4 made the gap visible on the parliamentary record. The Initiative’s research has documented the gap from outside Parliament. The two are now mutually reinforcing. What remains is for the gap to be addressed.

    What the Initiative Is Calling For

    Four steps that would close most of the gap

    None of the following requires the project to be paused, cancelled, or fundamentally redesigned. Each is a discrete accountability commitment, available within Parliament’s existing authority, that would bring ALTO’s governance closer to the standard that other major federal Crown projects already meet.

    Within Parliament’s authority now

    Enabling legislation for ALTO An Act of Parliament establishing ALTO’s mandate, powers, and reporting obligations, replacing the Order-in-Council foundation. This brings ALTO into line with other parent Crown corporations of comparable scale and provides Parliament with a statutory anchor for future oversight.
    Public release of the ALTO–Cadence contract With redactions only for genuinely commercial-sensitive information, on the model of routine federal procurement disclosure. The contract that the government has identified as the project’s first layer of accountability cannot serve that function while it remains sealed.

    Standing committee actions

    A Parliamentary Budget Officer review of the project’s economic case, including the benefit–cost ratio, the cost-estimate methodology, and the public-private financing assumptions. A senator has already raised this question with the Minister of Transport at the Transport and Communications Committee, where the Minister confirmed that the PBO is available to senators.
    A standing committee study of the project’s governance and procurement architecture, addressing the gaps documented in the February hearing. Such a study can be initiated under existing Senate or House committee mandates without requiring legislative change.
    Sources

    Primary documents and proceedings

    1.
    Standing Senate Committee on National Finance, Evidence, February 4, 2026 — subject-matter study of Bill C-15. Witnesses from Transport Canada High-Speed Rail Initiative. sencanada.ca
    2.
    Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, Evidence, December 2025 — testimony of the Minister of Transport on the High-Speed Rail Initiative. sencanada.ca/committees/trcm
    3.
    Bill C-15, Budget Implementation Act, 2025, No. 1 — the High-Speed Rail Network Act is contained in Division 1 of Part 5. parl.ca
    4.
    Financial Administration Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. F-11, Part X (Crown corporations). laws-lois.justice.gc.ca
    5.
    Andrew Pinsent, “High-Speed Rail in Eastern Ontario: Rural Backlash, Land Expropriation and Next Steps,” CFRA / Substack, May 2, 2026 — carrying the Imbleau interview confirming acquisition footprint and working-assumption status of the cost figure. Substack
    6.
    Order-in-Council establishing VIA TGF (now ALTO) as a wholly-owned subsidiary of VIA Rail, 2022. Order-in-Council records available through the Privy Council Office. orders-in-council.canada.ca
    7.
    VIA HFR – VIA TGF Inc. (Alto), Corporate Plan Summary 2025–26 to 2029–30. Tabled summary of the corporation’s corporate plan under Part X of the Financial Administration Act. Source for the board appointment mechanism, the C-5 active-representation language, the expropriation legislative-streamlining language, and the three named operational accountability instruments. altotrain.ca
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  Governance Brief  ·  May 7, 2026
    Independent, non-partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail corridor.

  • Two targets

    Two Targets

    Ridership figures in ALTO’s 2025-26 Corporate Plan and current public materials, side by side.

    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative · Ridership Brief · Published May 6, 2026 · Public consultation closed April 24, 2026
    In current ALTO materials

    ALTO’s Corporate Plan Summary 2025-2026 to 2029-30 — the formal accountability document submitted to the Minister of Transport for Treasury Board approval, signed by the Chief Financial Officer in January 2025 — cites a Project Outcome of at least 17 million annual passenger trips by 2059, defined to include “both Alto Passenger Rail Services and Local Services.”

    ALTO’s consultation website, as of May 6, 2026, continues to host a CEO opinion piece projecting 24 million passengers annually by 2055, “fully consistent with international outcomes.” A Globe and Mail editorial citing the same source extended this to 43 million by the 2080s. altotrain.ca

    Summary

    Two ridership figures currently appear in ALTO documents. The figure listed as Project Outcome #1 in the Corporate Plan submitted for Treasury Board approval is 17 million by 2059, defined to include both Alto Passenger Rail Services and the continuation of VIA Rail’s conventional Local Services. The figure in current public-facing materials is 24 million by 2055, rising to 43 million by 2084, presented in reference to Alto.

    The 17 million figure is the same target set in the 2023 Request for Qualifications, when the project was specified as 177 km/h High Frequency Rail at an estimated capital cost of $27.7 billion. It carries forward into the current Corporate Plan, which describes the project as 300 km/h high-speed rail at a Class 4 capital cost estimate of $60–90 billion. The Corporate Plan does not record a formal revision of the figure when the specification changed.

    This brief sets out what each document says, when each figure was published, and what other publicly available evidence indicates about ridership at the corridor scale. It does not draw conclusions about which figure is the operative one. The purpose is to make the documentary record visible.

    Download
    Two Targets — Full Brief (PDF)
    Documentary record of ALTO ridership figures across 2021–2026 publications
    Download PDF
    The Setting

    Why ridership figures matter for accountability

    A megaproject’s ridership projection anchors several other figures: the revenue model, the benefit-cost ratio, the modal-shift carbon argument, and the agglomeration economic case. When a ridership projection moves, related figures move with it.

    For ALTO, two ridership figures are currently visible in the public record. They appear in different documents, communicated to different audiences. This brief sets the two figures alongside each other, with the document trail and the available comparator evidence, and identifies the questions that would resolve which figure is the operative one.

    The brief is not an assessment of either figure on the merits. It is an assemblage of what has been published, in chronological order, with the structural definitions of each figure made explicit. Readers are invited to draw their own conclusions.

    A note on dating the Corporate Plan

    The Corporate Plan Summary 2025-26 to 2029-30 carries a CFO attestation dated January 7, 2025. Several elements of its content, however, post-date that signature: it describes the February 2025 HSR announcement and Cadence selection, the March 2025 PDA execution, Stage 1 of Co-Development as having “occurred from April 2025 to July 2025,” and workforce figures “as of May 2025.” Appendix 12’s chronology ends with August 2025. The document was therefore finalised in approximately mid-2025, with the CFO attestation date preserved as the formal accountability anchor. References in this brief to the Corporate Plan should be read with that timing in mind.

    Side by Side

    The two figures, in their own words

    Both figures appear in current ALTO materials. Both are being communicated to different audiences in May 2026.

    Public Materials · May 6, 2026Corporate Plan to Treasury Board · 2025-26
    24 million by 2055, rising to 43 million by 2084

    From the Imbleau opinion piece originally published in the Toronto Star and La Presse on April 17, 2026, reposted on the consultation site as of May 6, 2026:

    “Alto’s projected 24 million passengers annually by 2055 is fully consistent with international outcomes, based on the modelling used worldwide.”

    The Globe and Mail editorial citing the same source extended this to “43 million by the 2080s, up from three million today.”

    This figure is referenced in connection with the project’s benefit-cost claims, the 1.1% GDP uplift estimate, and the 50,000-job projection.    		 At least 17 million by 2059

    From the Corporate Plan Summary 2025-26 to 2029-30, Project Outcome #1, signed by the CFO January 7, 2025:

    “Significantly Increase Intercity Rail Passengers to at least 17 million by 2059 through both the new passenger rail services (NPRS Services) and Local Services through increased annual seat capacity.”

    The same figure appears in Appendix 9 (Long-term Outcomes) as: “up from 4.8 million in 2019, including both Alto Passenger Rail Services and Local Services.”

    This is the figure listed as a Project Outcome in the document submitted for Treasury Board approval.

    Three observations about the two figures, drawn from the documents themselves:

    The 17 million figure includes Local Services

    The Corporate Plan target counts “Alto Passenger Rail Services and Local Services” together. Local Services is the planning term, defined in the Corporate Plan’s glossary, for VIA Rail’s continuing conventional service in the Quebec City–Windsor corridor. The 24 million public figure, as presented, is referenced in connection with Alto. The two figures therefore measure across different scopes.

    The 17 million figure carries forward unchanged from the 2023 RFQ

    17 million by 2059 was the Project Outcome attached to the 2023 Request for Qualifications, when the project was specified as 177 km/h High Frequency Rail at an estimated capital cost of $27.7 billion. The same figure, with the same target year, appears in the Corporate Plan that describes the project as 300 km/h high-speed rail at a Class 4 cost estimate of $60–90 billion. Project Outcomes are formally established in procurement documents and are not trivially revised; the Corporate Plan does not record a revision to this figure on either the specification change or the cost-envelope change.

    The two figures use different baseline years

    The Corporate Plan cites a 4.8 million baseline from 2019 (pre-COVID). The Imbleau opinion piece cites “three million today.” VIA Rail’s 2024 Annual Report records 4.19 million corridor passengers, of which 3.34 million on Corridor East. The growth multiplier from each baseline to its corresponding target therefore differs.

    Document Trail

    When each figure was published

    The chronology below sets out the principal ALTO ridership figures in the public record, in order of publication.

    DateDocumentHeadline ridership figure
    December 2021 JPO Business Case Update v.002
    VIA / CIB internal (released via ATI, November 2025)    		 405M cumulative30-year cumulative trips 2030–2059 for HFR Electric scenario, an average of approximately 13.5 million per year. BCR ~ 0.4. NPV −$21.1 billion.
    February 2023 Request for Qualifications (HFR)
    PSPC, 126 pp.    		 17M by 2059The Project Outcome attached to the 177 km/h HFR specification at an approximate $27.7B capital cost. Zero operating subsidy was a parallel commitment.
    February 2025 HSR announcement
    Government of Canada    		 Specification changeProject rebranded from 177 km/h HFR to 300 km/h HSR. Cadence selected as Private Developer Partner. $3.9B Co-Development Phase funding announced.
    March 2025 Fast Forward: Shaping Canada’s Future
    ALTO public document    		 24M by 2055
    43M by 2084    Stated baseline of “3 million today.” Used in subsequent ALTO public materials and consultation graphics; cited in the Globe and Mail editorial.
    CFO signature
    Jan 7, 2025
    (finalised
    mid-2025)    		 Corporate Plan Summary 2025-26 to 2029-30
    Treasury Board submission    		 17M by 2059Listed as Project Outcome #1. Defined to include “both Alto Passenger Rail Services and Local Services.” 4.8M (2019) baseline. CFO attestation dated January 7, 2025; document content references events through summer 2025.
    April 17, 2026 Imbleau opinion piece
    Toronto Star · La Presse · ALTO website    		 24M by 2055Published one week before the consultation deadline. Described as “fully consistent with international outcomes, based on the modelling used worldwide.” Reposted on ALTO’s consultation site, where it remains as of May 6, 2026.

    The chronology has a feature worth surfacing on its own. The 24 million and 43 million figures first appear in the Fast Forward document of March 2025. The Corporate Plan, finalised in approximately mid-2025, references only the 17 million figure as a Project Outcome and does not mention, footnote, or otherwise acknowledge the higher Fast Forward figures. The April 2026 Imbleau opinion piece reverts to the 24 million figure for public-facing communications.

    In other words: since at least March 2025, the two figures have been running on parallel tracks. The lower figure has appeared in formal accountability documents (the Corporate Plan submitted for Treasury Board approval). The higher figure has appeared in public-facing communications (the Fast Forward document, the consultation website, the CEO’s opinion pieces, and external commentary citing them). Neither document has reconciled the two, and neither has stated which is the operative ridership target.

    Adjacent Disclosure

    The cost figure, in the same period

    The Imbleau opinion piece of April 17, 2026 contains the following statement on the project’s capital cost:

    “In order to finalize project cost, we need to know what is being built and where. We must choose the best alignment through consultation. Then comes detailed engineering for bridges, tunnels and the design; a 320 km/h train requires millimeter level precision.”

    The publicly cited Class 4 capital cost estimate is $60–90 billion. The Co-Development Phase funding of $3.9 billion has been approved and is being expended over fiscal years 2024-25 to 2029-30 per the Corporate Plan. The CEO’s statement above appears in the same publication on the same day as the 24 million ridership figure cited earlier in this brief.

    This brief makes no inference about the relationship between the cost statement and the ridership figures. They are presented here together because they appear in the same document and are part of the documentary record currently available to the public.

    Comparator Evidence

    Other publicly available ridership analyses for the corridor

    For context, three additional sources of corridor ridership analysis are part of the public record. Each uses a different methodology and a different scope.

    Munk School Global Economic Policy Lab (Toronto–Montréal segment only)

    The University of Toronto’s Global Economic Policy Lab published an analysis projecting 9.44 million annual passengers by year 20 and 10.45 million by year 30 on the Toronto–Montréal segment, which the GEPL identified as generating 57% of total corridor ridership. Scaled to the full corridor on the GEPL’s own segment-share assumption, this implies approximately 16–17 million by year 20. This is the only independent academic modelling exercise for the corridor that has been published with a disclosed methodology.

    JPO Business Case Update v.002 (December 2021, ATI release)

    The Joint Project Office Business Case Update released through Access to Information by the Canada Infrastructure Bank in November 2025 projects 405 million cumulative trips over 30 years (2030–2059) for the HFR Electric scenario, an average of approximately 13.5 million per year. The same document records a benefit-cost ratio of approximately 0.4 and a 30-year NPV of −$21.1 billion against a $27.7B capital cost baseline.

    VIA Rail Annual Report 2024 (current corridor baseline)

    The most recent published actual corridor ridership figure is 4,191,080 passengers in 2024, of which 3,336,057 on Corridor East (Quebec City–Toronto). The Montréal–Ottawa–Toronto segment alone carried 2,314,024 passengers. These figures were achieved with on-time performance averaging 51% for the year.

    No reconciliation between the ALTO 17 million Corporate Plan figure, the ALTO 24 million public figure, and these comparator analyses has been published.

    From the Documentary Record

    Five things visible in the public record

    Without drawing inferences about motive or intent, five observations can be made directly from the documents reviewed for this brief.

    1. The two figures have been running on parallel tracks since March 2025

    The 24 million figure was introduced in the Fast Forward document of March 2025. The Corporate Plan was finalised in approximately mid-2025; it references only the 17 million figure as a Project Outcome and does not mention or footnote the Fast Forward figures. Both figures remain in active circulation in May 2026: the 17 million figure in the Corporate Plan, the 24 million figure in the consultation website and the CEO’s April 2026 opinion piece.

    2. The two figures have different scopes

    The 17 million figure is defined as “Alto Passenger Rail Services and Local Services” combined. The 24 million figure, as presented in the Imbleau opinion piece, references Alto. The Corporate Plan does not break the 17 million figure into Alto-component and Local-Services-component shares.

    3. The 17 million figure was set under the previous specification

    17 million by 2059 was the Project Outcome attached to the 2023 RFQ for the 177 km/h HFR specification at $27.7B. The same figure carries forward into the Corporate Plan that describes the project as 300 km/h HSR at $60–90B, without a recorded revision to the target.

    4. The capital cost is also presented as a working figure

    The CEO has publicly stated that “in order to finalize project cost, we need to know what is being built and where.” The Class 4 estimate of $60–90 billion is, on this account, a working figure pending corridor selection and detailed engineering. The Co-Development Phase funding of $3.9 billion has been approved and is being expended.

    5. Independent ridership review remains unpublished

    The Parliamentary Budget Officer has not published a review of either the cost or the ridership figures. The only independent academic modelling exercise for the corridor with a disclosed methodology, the Munk School GEPL analysis, projects approximately 16–17 million for the full corridor by year 20 of operation.

    Where things stand · May 6, 2026

    Disclosure ledger

    The following items are, or are not, currently in the public record.

    Disclosed
    Corporate Plan ridership figure: 17 million by 2059, including Alto Passenger Rail Services and Local Services. Corporate Plan Summary 2025-26 to 2029-30, Project Outcome #1.
    Disclosed
    Public-facing ridership figure: 24 million by 2055, rising to 43 million by 2084. Fast Forward (March 2025); Imbleau opinion piece (April 2026); ALTO consultation website (current).
    Partial
    Definition of the 17M target. Disclosed in Appendix 9 of the Corporate Plan as including Local Services, but not surfaced in summary communications about the figure.
    Not disclosed
    Demand modelling methodology for either the 17 million or the 24 million figure. No model documentation, elasticity assumptions, modal-shift coefficients, or sensitivity analysis has been published for either figure.
    Not disclosed
    Reconciliation between the two figures. No public ALTO statement explaining the relationship between the Corporate Plan figure and the public-marketing figure, or stating which is intended to be the operative ridership target.
    Not disclosed
    The Alto-only share of the 17M target. The Corporate Plan does not break the 17 million into the share attributable to high-speed services and the share attributable to Local Services.
    Not disclosed
    Updated benefit-cost ratio for the current 300 km/h HSR specification at $60–90 billion capital cost against the 17M ridership target. The last published BCR (~0.4) was calculated against the $27.7B HFR specification.
    Not disclosed
    Door-to-door journey time projection from representative origin points, accounting for the now-likely suburban Toronto station and Tremblay Ottawa terminus. The 24M figure is presumed to assume downtown-to-downtown service that is no longer the operating reality.
    Not disclosed
    Independent demand audit results from the Parliamentary Budget Officer or comparable independent body, against either the 17M or the 24M figure.
    Download Full Brief
    Two Targets (PDF)
    Documentary record of ALTO ridership figures, with comparator analyses
    Download PDF
    Questions for the Minister and the PBO

    Six questions that would resolve the disclosure gaps

    The following questions, addressed to the Minister of Transport and to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, would surface the items currently undisclosed.

    Question 1 “Which is ALTO’s operative ridership target: the 17 million by 2059 figure in the Corporate Plan submitted for Treasury Board approval, or the 24 million by 2055 figure in the Corporation’s consultation materials and the CEO’s opinion pieces?”
    Question 2 “Will ALTO publish a breakdown of the 17 million Project Outcome figure into the share attributable to Alto Passenger Rail Services and the share attributable to Local Services?”
    Question 3 “Will ALTO publish the demand modelling methodology, elasticity assumptions, modal-shift coefficients, and sensitivity ranges underpinning both the 17 million and the 24 million figures?”
    Question 4 “What is the updated benefit-cost ratio for the current 300 km/h high-speed rail specification at the Class 4 capital cost estimate of $60–90 billion, calculated against the 17 million Treasury Board ridership target?”
    Question 5 “Has the Parliamentary Budget Officer been asked to review the ridership and cost figures underpinning ALTO’s benefit-cost case, and if so, what is the expected timeline for publication of that review?”
    Question 6 “Given the Corporation’s acknowledgment that ‘in order to finalize project cost, we need to know what is being built and where,’ what is the formal status of the $60–90 billion capital cost figure relative to the $3.9 billion in Co-Development Phase funding already committed?”
    Sources

    Primary documents

    1.
    VIA HFR–VIA TGF Inc. (Alto), “Corporate Plan Summary 2025-2026 to 2029-30,” submitted to the Minister of Transport for Treasury Board approval, signed by the Chief Financial Officer January 7, 2025. Project Outcome #1 (Executive Summary, Appendix 2, Appendix 9, Appendix 13).
    2.
    Martin Imbleau, “High-speed rail is not a leap of faith: Why it matters for Canada’s growth,” opinion piece published Toronto Star and La Presse, April 17, 2026; reposted on ALTO consultation website. altotrain.ca (retrieved May 6, 2026)
    3.
    ALTO, “Fast Forward: Shaping Canada’s Future with a High-Speed Rail Network,” explanatory document, March 2025.
    4.
    Public Services and Procurement Canada, “Request for Qualifications — High Frequency Rail Project (RFQ No. T8128-210188/C),” February 17, 2023. Project Outcomes including 17M ridership by 2059 and zero operating subsidy. 126 pages.
    5.
    VIA Rail Canada / Canada Infrastructure Bank, “JPO Business Case Update v.002,” December 2021. Released through Access to Information by CIB, November 2025. Source for 405M cumulative trips, BCR ~0.4, and 30-year NPV of −$21.1B for HFR Electric option.
    6.
    VIA Rail Canada, “Annual Report 2024,” published 2025. 2024 actual corridor ridership: 4,191,080 passengers; Corridor East subtotal: 3,336,057; Montréal–Ottawa–Toronto segment: 2,314,024.
    7.
    The Globe and Mail, editorial referencing ALTO ridership projections: “projected ridership numbers – 24 million trips annually, in the 2050s, rising to 43 million by the 2080s, up from three million today.”
    8.
    Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, Global Economic Policy Lab analysis of Toronto–Montréal HSR ridership: 9.44 million by year 20; 10.45 million by year 30 on Toronto–Montréal segment (57% of corridor).
    ALTO HSR Citizen Research Initiative  ·  citizenresearch.ca  ·  Ridership Brief  ·  May 6, 2026
    Independent, non-partisan research on the proposed Toronto–Quebec City high-speed rail corridor.