OTTAWA — Newly minted NDP leader Avi Lewis says he has concerns about Liberals’ high-speed rail megaproject but isn’t necessarily against the project itself.

Lewis said on Monday that he was skeptical about the public-private structure of the project, a joint venture between federal Crown corporation Alto and Cadence, a private consortium that includes Air Canada and AtkinsRéalis (formerly SNC-Lavalin).

“When it comes to the Alto project, I don’t think the problem is high-speed rail itself, I think it’s the formulation of the project, it’s the structure of it,” Lewis told reporters during his first press conference on Parliament Hill since becoming NDP leader in late March.

“We know that public-private partnerships are opaque by design, it’s impossible to have transparency when you have private partners, they’re usually overbudget and they usually take way longer than projected,” said Lewis.

Lewis said he felt that large-scale transportation projects should be done under full public ownership.

When pressed to clarify his position, Lewis said he was “not against” the project in French.

The proposed electrified high-speed passenger rail line, connecting about 1,000 kilometres between Toronto and Quebec City, would be the biggest megaproject ever undertaken in Canada, with an initial cost estimate of $60 billion to $90 billion.

The project is not without its critics, including on the left. Some NDP pundits have framed it as a class issue , noting that it stands to benefit an elite clientele of well-off riders who live in major urban centres while imposing costs on the more sparsely populated communities along its path.

Lewis voiced some of these concerns on Mondays.

“When it comes to the controversies around (Alto), the route has to be navigated carefully and the (affected) communities have an absolute right to be consulted thoroughly and heard,” said Lewis. “If necessary, compensation has to be part of the formula.”

Lewis campaigned on a promise to rapidly scale up high-speed rail and other forms of clean transportation across Canada, as part of a Green New Deal to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in low-carbon sector.

“Imagine it… Luxurious and affordable high-speed rail that makes flying to neighboring provinces a waste of time and money,” reads one line from Lewis’s platform.

And, while he stressed that he still supports high-speed rail philosophically, he was notably hesitant to give a full-throated endorsement to a project that’s quickly become a political football.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre circulated an open letter in late March calling on the Liberals to cancel the Alto project , calling it a “boondoggle” that would require the expropriation of “thousands of acres” of private property across Ontario and Quebec.

The Bloc Québécois has also raised the issue of land expropriations in Quebec and has sought to make Alto’s high-speed rail project the ballot-box question of Monday’s byelection in Terrebonne.

Former NDP strategist Jordan Leichnitz told National Post that more modest, targeted investments in public investment could give policymakers more bang for their buck than the Alto megaproject.

“I find it shocking the amount of money they are willing to pour into (Alto) while they are cutting general transit funding by billions,” said Leichnitz.

“I get that bus service in Sault Ste. Marie(, Ont.) isn’t sexy, but that’s what working people need,” she added.

National Post
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