Regular readers here will know my thoughts on Doug Ford’s greatest political weakness: he can’t hold a controversial position against a backlash and seems constitutionally incapable of thinking even one step ahead of how a decision or announcement is likely to play out before making it. It’s an old pattern, oft repeated: Ford or some minister will announce something with an obvious downside, be criticized, dig in and fight back, double and then triple down, and then panic, retreat, and often end up doing absolutely nothing or, in fact, doing the opposite. You might have seen Ford quadrupling down on his desire to have “like-minded” judges appointed. Only time will tell whether this reflects Ford’s determination to see this through or whether we’re simply plowing deeper into the compounding-the-humiliation stage ahead of an eventual retreat.
Now let’s change course for a moment (it’ll make sense — don’t worry): two days ago, the Super Tuesday primary votes in the United States confirmed (practically, though not yet officially) that, barring any other bizarre wildcards, the next presidential contest to the south will be a Joe Biden-Donald Trump rematch. I began thinking about how that campaign might unfold, and I mulled over Biden’s nickname from his Senate days: “Amtrak Joe.” The senator for Delaware was famous for taking the Amtrak train from the capitol to his home, riding 150 miles each way back and forth every day when the Senate was in session, racking up thousands of trips. Late last year, the presidentcommitted billions to passenger-rail initiatives in the US, including funding for two high-speed-rail projects, but also numerous more routine improvements to Amtrak’s passenger network. This is all in pursuit of the dream of vastly improved rail service, including some high-speed lines, crisscrossing the US ... and the US-Canada border.
See? This was all going somewhere.
Gorgeous, colourful maps showing a truly continental high-speed-rail network abound. None are likely to exist anywhere off a page or screen on a timescale of less than decades. But, in theory, a US high-speed-rail network would or could connect with an expanded Canadian network. Rail lines could extend north from New York and Boston and go to Montreal. A line from New York City west to Buffalo could run to Toronto. And some kind of enhanced rail service from Quebec City (or even Atlantic Canada, perhaps) could go through Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto and through southwestern Ontario to Detroit, and then onto Chicago and the American midwest and industrial heartland.
Canada indeed has a plan that basically aligns with this. It’s called “high frequency” rail. Not exactly high speed, at least not necessarily. But the plan would move Via’s passenger-train traffic off the rail lines that are owned by the freight companies, which prioritize their own on-time performance over the passenger trains they’ve been saddled with. The plan would link Toronto to Ottawa, via Peterborough, then continue onto Montreal (with further extensions to Windsor and Quebec City planned, but Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal is the main route). With Via operating its own lines, free of congestion, the trips would be somewhat faster, but, even more important, vastly more reliable. Via’s on-time reliability is notoriously awful, and this would (it is hoped) fix that. With that knock on its performance hopefully negated, the idea is that Via’s daily passenger trips would become a more viable, palatable option for commuters, who are now likely to choose a flight or a drive over the crapshoot that is trusting your journey to Via. (This includes me. I want to like Via, but… I’ve tried it. No thanks.)
High-frequency rail might not be exactly high-speed rail, but it might begin restoring passenger service in Ontario and Quebec to a point where high-speed rail could become more economically viable (or even simply politically tempting).
How’s it going on that front?
You know what I’m about to say, don’t you?
In case you’re new here, it turns out it’s not going great, to the extent it’s “going” at all. Officially, the high-frequency-rail project began in 2016, with a proposal by Via to the federal government. The last major update on the status of the project came in October of last year, when, and I’m quoting here right from the project’s website, “the Government of Canada launched a Request for Proposals (RFP). Through the RFP, the Government of Canada will select a private sector partner to collaborate with to optimize the HFR project prior to a final investment decision by the Government of Canada.”
I went digging through the news archives because I was curious about the precise dates in play here. High-frequency rail was announced as a desired project by Via onApril 14, 2016. The RFP process, noted in the quote above, was announced on October 13, 2023. This handy website informs me that 2,741 days elapsed between those two events. And if we want to count up until the current date, it’s been 2,885 days.
And, in that time, those 2,885 days, we — a G7 nation with a multi-trillion-dollar economy and 40 million people — have advanced this bold vision for a more prosperous, greener future all the way from “we should do this thing” to “we’re hoping to pay someone to firm up the plan so we can decide if we’re going to actually do this thing.”
Two thousand. Eight hundred. And eighty-five. Days.
And we still haven’t actually decided to do it.
Biden was, of course, elected in 2020. He was inaugurated on January 20, 2021. His announcement for more than USD$8 billion in upgrades to Amtrak’s network was made on December 8, 2023. I used the counting website again: that’s 1,051 days.
Biden was able to get from “sworn in” to “I’m giving these specific projects billions of dollars” in 36.4 per cent of the time Canada has spent not deciding whether we’re actually going to do HFR. And that number looks better for Biden with each passing day we decide/announce/do nothing much in particular.
So, yeah. We’ve got some problems in this country. I don’t wish more Ford on anyone, but the kind of delays that are just routine for the feds are egregious and horrifying. (And, yes, I know we had a pandemic and a war and everything else — that’s still no excuse for this level of dysfunction.) So here’s my challenge, to Ford and Justin Trudeau alike: Let’s set a goal. Let’s make major decisions in months, having used that time to make sure that we are happy with that decision, and then stick with them.
That cannot be too much to ask for. It can’t.
Can it?
P.S.: I wouldn’t normally end a column with a post-script, but I just cannot not share this with my readers. As part of my dive into the news archives, I found this gem, in the story about the original Via announcement back in 2016: “With any luck, the $4-billion project will be ‘shovel ready’ a year from now, with the first of the new fleet carrying passengers by 2019, says Via president and CEO Yves Desjardins-Siciliano.”
Guess we weren’t lucky, eh?
Donate