This article originally appeared in The Hub.
By Richard Shimooka, April 13, 2026
Last week, the Carney government recommitted to the Toronto-Quebec City high-speed rail project known as Alto. The line is estimated to cost between $60–90 billion dollars and take at least a decade to complete.
The project has been touted as a jobs creator and an economic booster. But not everyone is onboard. To date, at least five townships and municipalities have passed resolutions opposing the proposed route, citing concerns of land expropriations, community disruptions, and billions spent with little local benefit.
Speaking in Peterborough, one of the seven proposed stops, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre channeled these frustrations, calling the project a nonsensical “boondoggle.”
Personally, I love railways and particularly high speed rail. During a visit to Japan last month, a significant portion of my travel occurred on various parts of that country’s networks. By many metrics, Japan’s famous Shinkansen, or bullet train, is the gold standard for high-speed rail design. The country has developed one of the highest levels of train integration for its population’s transport needs, and its high-speed rail network is a key part of its network.
To many, this is the system Canada should aspire to. The convenience, accessibility, and costs all make it an attractive option. Yet despite my personal inclination towards this mode of travel, it’s critical to be realistic about its potential applicability for Canada, particularly given the initial cost estimates. The Japanese example is illustrative—and not for reasons boosters will be keen to admit.
Poilievre’s caution is warranted. Canada is not Japan, and we should be wary of expecting a similar success if we were to implement the project as proposed.
Japan’s experience
In Japan, railways, have long been held up as a signature of the country’s modernity since the Meiji Restoration in the 1860s.This was particularly the case for the Shinkansen, which was widely seen as one of Japan’s great technological marvels of the post-Second World War era.
At the same time, rail travel was the best option forced on Japan due to existing structural factors that affected the island nation. The first was Japan’s lack of indigenous energy sources, which increases the cost of vehicle ownership, as well as the lack of a highly developed highway network between cities (in a fashion that would be recognizable to Canadians). Car ownership occupies a different role in society, mostly focused on local travel, and intercity driving is generally discouraged, particularly through the use of toll roads.
The Shinkansen saw sustained growth from the 1960s into the 2010s, but a particularly significant boost occurred after 1989. This coincided with a broader shift in Japanese politics and society in what was the post-financial bubble era. A key component was successive efforts to stimulate the economy through massive infrastructure spending.
Previously, the network growth focused on largely profitable links between very large population centres. After 1990, several less profitable routes were established to the less-developed west coast of Japan and the southern and northern islands. This was also part of the the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party’s political strategy to maintain its strong base of support outside of the largest urban centres.
Canadian challenges
In Canada it is hard to see a similar dynamic here that justifies the same infrastructure build-out. In Japan, their high-speed rail benefits the vast majority of the country. That is not the case in Canada. We are a much larger, spread out, and more regionally isolated country. Already the Conservatives have voiced their intention to cancel the project, and there is a clear lack of broader appeal for such a project outside of the proposed corridor. Whatever benefits the rail would bring, they cannot be extended to other regions of Canada, and other than the Calgary-Edmonton corridor, there are no other similar opportunities where such a rail line might plausibly make sense.
This, naturally, will limit national support for such a project, even if it unfolded with no apparent issues or overruns—a highly unlikely set of assumptions. In a time when Canadians are faced with ever-increasing deficits at all levels of government, it will be difficult to maintain goodwill for a flashy, costly major project whose benefits accrue to only a portion of the overall population.
Moreover, it’s unlikely to provoke a broader shift in Canadians’ transportation preferences, especially after the government has reversed many of the Trudeau-era policies—the carbon tax being the signature one—that sought such a transformation.
Another key difference is that the constant cadence of ongoing construction of these rail projects provides the Japanese government and companies vital learning experience and helps maintain a base of skilled knowledge. Not having to start from scratch on every project in this way helps drive the costs down. Alto, however, promises to become an orphaned white elephant, which will likely encounter this issue, as it is unlikely that it will sustain a larger construction boom.
Beyond the technical skillsets required, there’s also political/bureaucratic capacity that gets developed as well. Like Canada, Japan has, at times, encountered significant local opposition to major infrastructure projects, including the construction of Narita airport in the 1960s and ‘70s, and several Shinkansen lines.
Unfortunately, the Canadian federal system is particularly susceptible to these challenges, with multiple levels of government and authorities that can force delays, assessments, and rerouting that will almost certainly increase the original cost and schedule estimates. The Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion is instructive—ultimately, the government had to nationalize the project, and it subsequently came in tens of billions of dollars over budget.
The advantages to high-speed rail for the affected region and cities should not be ignored. They could indeed be significant. But the real question that needs answering is whether the likely true costs of Alto are worth the opportunity costs of other alternatives. Cautionary tales abound across the Anglosphere, with similar high-speed rail projects becoming the very boondoggles naysayers here are worried about. The U.K.’s HS2 and California’s San Francisco to Los Angeles projects have both seen colossal delays and significant cost overruns, ultimately becoming millstones around the governments who commissioned them.
In sum, the assumption that Japan’s experience building out high-speed rail is instructive for Canada is simplistic at best.
An alternative
There is, however, another Japanese travel example we would be wise to look to.
Japan has a robust domestic air network that travels between many of the same locations serviced by the Shinkansen. This provides a travel alternative competitive in terms of both cost and speed. Investing heavily in upgrading Canada’s aviation infrastructure to handle greater, more frequent domestic loads and allowing more competition into the industry would be a much more prudent use of taxpayer funds and government attention. And even better, it would benefit the entire country, not just the Toronto-Quebec City corridor.
This should be the model for such efforts—the government ought to prioritize those that are based on hard assessments of where scarce tax dollars are best utilized for their greatest effect. Is greater spending on inter-city transportation systems as essential as interurban systems that would ease the gridlock which seem to pervade Canada’s greater cities? No.
While the Shinkansen is a modern marvel, Canada charting its own path would do better for its future prosperity.
Richard Shimooka is a Hub contributing writer and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute who writes on defence policy.
