OTTAWA – Hundreds of people protested against the proposed Alto high-speed electric train on Parliament Hill on June 10.
The proposed train is now expected to cost more than $100-billion to connect Quebec City to Toronto with just three stops in Ontario. A new train line for the 300-km per hour train would require carving out a 60-metre wide corridor 1,000-km long with 12 ft., high fence. Alto hopes to start the project in 2029 and complete it within 10 years.
Rural communities and farmers are furious about the project. Farmers Forum joined them at the protest and asked them: Why are you against the high-speed train?
Marjorie Decaire
“Some of these farms will be severed in half. They won’t have access to the other half of their land that they’ve worked on for years. It’s going to impact our emergency services because of the (low number of) crossings, not to mention the impact on the environment.”
Marjorie Decaire
Hobby farmer
Vankleek Hill, Ont.
Lise Beauchamp
“There will be fences on each side of that train. The train will pass directly on my land. Thirty per cent of my land will be on the side where my cows are, where my animals are and where all my feed is, where the storage for the feed for the cows is, and seventy per cent is on the other side of that track. So, it will damage all my business.”
Lise Beauchamp
Dairy farmer
Mirabel, QC
Josef Odermatt
“We’re totally against the Alto. It’s no good for nobody. Transportation is gonna cost you a lot more and it’s divided a lot of farms in half, so the value of the farms are gonna go down so fast.”.
Josef Odermatt
Dairy and cash crop
Dunvegan, Ont.
Norm Burns
“Depending on where the overpasses or underpasses are, who knows how long it’s going to take to drive – a five-minute drive now, (becomes) an hour – you have to go all the way around. Who knows? We had a townhall meeting there a couple months ago and it was packed. There were people standing outside. Everybody is against this.”
Norm Burns
Welder
Portland, Ont.
Marcus Haefele
“There’s no need for it in Canada. All it does is tear us apart and destroy rural communities.
“They have defined a 10km corridor and our farm falls within that 10 km corridor, and we’ve been given multiple notices already to gain access to our land. A lot of people in my neighborhood, close neighbours, close friends, everybody is against this. Nobody wants the train because they all realize that they only have negative impacts. People in the city probably aren’t aware of this and they don’t know what the actual downsides are.
Marcus Haefele
Broiler chickens and crop farmer
Vankleek Hill, Ont.
Steve Kenny
“There is nobody asking for high-speed rail. The public hasn’t been consulted. I think SNC Lavalin is a big partner in this, and we’ve seen them in corrupt deals before. So I just think it’s a big waste of money. It’ll be a lot more than $90 billion by the time it’s done.
“We live right beside (the proposed corridor). It could make it very hard to farm.”
Steve Kenny
Cashcropper
Navan, Ont.
Glen Edwards
“The secrecy behind it all, that’s what really bothers me, that’s why I’m here.”
Glen Edwards
Dairy farmer
Ottawa, Ont.
Howard Kwan
“I’m against it. There is no transparency There is no accountability to what (the government is) doing. There are non-disclosure agreements. They’re expropriating the land without doing the proper procedures … environmental impact assessments and privacy assessments … and they haven’t disclosed all of the money being spent on it. How could they proceed without any of that being completed?
“I always tell people my parents are from communist China and we know tyranny when we see it.”
Howard Kwan
Resident
Ottawa, Ont.
