Opinion: Will high-speed rail help get Canadas electric ambitions back on track? [Video]

Chris Turner’s latest book, How to Be a Climate Optimist: Blueprints for a Better World, won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

Last week, with the country in the grip of a nationalistic fervour the likes of which Canada hasn’t seen in decades, the federal government announced that it was investing $3.9-billion to begin design work on an all-electric high-speed rail (HSR) line from Toronto to Quebec City. This is merely the first phase in a project that – if completed – would take more than a decade and cost in the tens of billions.

That is, to be sure, a big hairy old if, hanging over the pledge of a government in limbo, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau having fewer days left on the job than your typical bullet train has passenger cars. Still, this is serious money, a new Crown corporation (called Alto), and a consortium of developers (calling itself “Cadence”) that includes Quebec’s massive investment fund CDPQ, state-owned French rail …