FIELD REPORT: In Mirabel, Alto’s high-speed rail revives 1969, and its study stays hidden

The imagined wall

A range road in Mirabel

The first structure of the high-speed train in Mirabel is a wall.

Not built yet. Not even drawn. Only imagined, by a woman driving home on the highway, in the Laurentians north of Montreal.

She drives along the highway, looks at the landscape and imagines the wall, Manon Girard told Radio-Canada, the French-language public broadcaster. The wall is the corridor of Alto’s high-speed train, which could pass near her house, on a rural range road in Mirabel.

Fifty years later

Manon Girard has already lived through one expropriation. The airport’s, some fifty years ago, the public broadcaster reports.

She now follows every piece of news about the high-speed rail project. She is not the only one.

Let us start from that wall. Then widen the frame: a road, a town, a corridor a thousand kilometers long, a bill in the tens of billions.

An imagined wall, and already a memory.

A full house on Thursday night

Two hundred people

On the evening of Thursday, September 24, the hall of the Domaine-Vert Nord cultural center, in Mirabel, is full, according to Radio-Canada.

About 200 people came to hear two independent experts who have analyzed Alto’s plan. The talk was organized by Robert Charron, the opposition leader at Mirabel city hall.

I was not in the room. Everything I report from the evening comes from Radio-Canada’s account, published on September 25 at 4 a.m.

I am guiding you through that room by way of that account. I do not claim to have had a seat there.

Pointe-Fortune, 648 residents

The mayor of Pointe-Fortune, near Rigaud, Sandra Lavoratore, was moved by the turnout, Radio-Canada reports.

She describes her municipality: 648 residents, five kilometers long, nine square kilometers, an annual budget of C$1 million.

Faced with a project like Alto, she says, it is frightening. It is immense.

One million a year on one side. Tens of billions on the other.

One room. Two experts. One question.

A full room for a simple question.

Sixty billion against forty-nine

HEC and Laval

The two guests are not grassroots activists. They are researchers.

Jacques Roy is professor emeritus of transportation and logistics management at HEC Montréal, the business school. Jean Mercier is an associate professor of public policy and public transit at Université Laval. They have followed the project for several months, in a personal capacity, Radio-Canada notes.

With a third expert, Pierre Filion of the University of Waterloo, they signed a report this spring that the UPA, Quebec’s farmers’ union, posts on its website.

Closing the books

Their conclusion, as reported: Alto’s cost estimates are badly understated, and its ridership forecasts are rosy.

Jacques Roy sums up his math. Alto is presenting a project that returns C$49 billion and costs, at the very least, C$60 billion. He would close the books and go home, he says.

Sixty against forty-nine. That is the bill. It does not balance.

Jean Mercier, at the microphone, asks another question: was this project really planned?

The two researchers favor a high-frequency train, on existing rail rights-of-way. Cheaper. Less disruptive, they say.

Two researchers, and a bill that does not balance.

Alto’s table

March 2026

Alto has its answer. It is public, and dated.

On March 19, 2026, the Crown corporation publishes a post titled, in substance, why a high-speed train rather than a high-frequency train. It contains a table.

The high-speed train would cost C$60 billion to C$90 billion, in 2024 dollars. The high-frequency train, C$45 billion to C$75 billion. About 20% more, for the first.

Five times more, says Alto

According to that table, high-speed rail would generate C$49.5 billion in direct social benefits, against C$33.6 billion for high-frequency rail. A permanent GDP gain of C$24.5 billion, against C$4.9 billion. Fifty thousand construction jobs, against forty-four thousand. A top speed of 320 km/h, against 200.

Jacques Roy’s 49 billion is this C$49.5 billion. The same figure, read from two sides.

Alto recalls that the high-frequency train was the option first considered by the federal government. High-speed rail, the Crown corporation writes, would cut travel times between major cities by about 50% compared with conventional trains.

An irony of the archive: founded in 2022, the Crown corporation was first called VIA HFR, or VIA TGF in French, the UPA recalls. High-frequency rail. The name changed. The debate did not.

Alto compares benefits between two trains. Roy compares benefits to a cost. Same figures. Two readings.

This report reads it this way: the choice of high-speed rail rests on a comparison that those who will pay have seen only in summary.

Alto publishes a table, not the report.

A table convinces a minister. It does not convince a range road.

The document nobody has seen

The study mentioned

On September 25, Radio-Canada reports Alto’s position. A comparative study was recently carried out by the Canadian government, the Crown corporation says, and it concludes that high-speed rail offers a better return on investment than high-frequency rail.

A study. Recent. Federal. Favorable.

The UPA, for its part, is still asking to see the expert analyses that convinced Ottawa and Alto, according to the same article.

An independent comparison

On its website, updated on September 14, the UPA demands an independent comparison of the two options before any irreversible commitment.

The UPA wants to see the full costs. The UPA wants to see the risk of overruns. The UPA wants to see ridership and time savings. The UPA wants to see spinoffs and impacts on the land. The UPA wants to see the opportunity cost.

Nothing exotic. The list you would expect from any public project.

The UPA adds that, according to Transport Canada, the C$60 billion to C$90 billion is a so-called Class 5 estimate, for planning, not a budget.

A study exists, says Alto. Where is it?

They cite the study. They do not show it.

Seventeen hundred

Over 200 kilometers

Back to the range road. To the wall.

According to estimates from Alto’s president and CEO, Martin Imbleau, reported by Radio-Canada, 1,700 properties could be expropriated, including at least 500 farmland lots.

The UPA specifies that those figures cover the Montreal–Ottawa section alone, about 200 kilometers, according to Alto.

A fence on each side

The full project calls for a thousand kilometers of new, electrified, passenger-only track, the UPA describes.

At 300 or 320 km/h, no level crossings. A high fence on each side of the right-of-way. To cross, an overpass or a tunnel.

A corridor ten kilometers wide is being studied to trace a right-of-way of 60 meters.

Seventeen hundred. Five hundred. Sixty meters. Ten kilometers of corridor.

So Manon Girard’s wall has a width. It is in writing.

Seventeen hundred properties behind a fence.

March 1969

Fourteen villages

Mirabel has felt this vertigo before. This is where the archive speaks.

On March 27, 1969, the federal government announced the expropriation of an area equal to three-quarters of the island of Montreal, to build an airport, Radio-Canada recalled in 2025.

The measure broke up or wiped off the map 14 villages. It forced the expropriation of 1,700 families, or 12,000 people, according to the same program.

The other seventeen hundred

Another count exists. In 2019, Radio-Canada wrote that more than 3,000 families had to leave their homes or give up part of their land. About 97,000 acres had been taken in 1969.

I give both figures. They do not count the same thing.

But the first one echoes. Seventeen hundred families in 1969. Seventeen hundred properties in 2026. And in between…

The airport never kept its promises. In 2019, half a century later, Ottawa announced it would sell the last unused lands back to those who owned them just before the expropriation.

That day, the grand chief of the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, Serge Simon, recalled that every government had ignored his people for 150 years while their lands were taken, according to Radio-Canada.

Land taken. Then taken back. Then returned. Memory cannot be sold back.

Mirabel has already watched a big project draw its fences.

What Mirabel is asking for

Opposed since February

The City of Mirabel has its position. It posts it on a page devoted to the project.

High-speed rail is a federal initiative, carried by Alto. It is not a City project, it writes. And the city council has come out against it.

The mayor says she has not changed her mind since February. On March 26, she presented the City’s brief to federal Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon.

Land already taken

Her request fits in one sentence. If the route runs through Mirabel, the study corridor, about 30 km across its territory, should include the airport site and the ten or so kilometers of federal land acquired for the airport, as well as provincial and municipal land.

Use land already expropriated once, rather than taking new land from farmers.

A city. A brief. A precise request.

On June 22, according to the City, the minister asked Alto to consider Mirabel’s requests. The mayor called the announcement satisfactory.

A city offers to reuse what was already taken from it.

Alto’s answer to farmers

High-frequency rail cuts through farms too

Now we have to look at the other side. Honestly.

Alto answers that a high-frequency train would not be without impact. The current network is shared with freight. To keep its promises, the Crown corporation writes, high-frequency rail would also require major stretches of new track, in the city as in the countryside.

If Alto is right on that point, farmland would not be spared by high-frequency rail either. Less affected, perhaps. Not entirely spared.

Up to 350%

Another fact that unsettles Thursday’s room. According to information obtained by Radio-Canada on September 19, Alto’s proposed compensation could reach 350% of the market value of the farmland affected.

Land valued at C$60,000 could be worth C$200,000 to C$220,000 to its owner. And in the vast majority of cases, less than 5% of the surface would be acquired, according to Alto spokesperson Caroline Des Rosiers.

She adds that Alto wants to limit the impact from the outset, by following lot lines and existing infrastructure.

These are arguments. They carry weight. I publish them.

And yet Thursday’s question remains whole. Generous compensation does not answer the question of the study.

You can pay well for the land. You must also show the proof.

A 45-minute detour

Six letters

On September 19, in Rigaud, hundreds of farmers from Quebec and Ontario protested against the project, Radio-Canada reports.

Among them was Karine Bercier, a farmer from Saint-Isidore, in eastern Ontario. She says she received six letters from Alto asking for access to her land. She refused.

Her farm is not for sale, she says.

The wall, every day

Back to the wall. It has changed since the first paragraph.

For Manon Girard, it was an image by the side of the highway. For Karine Bercier, it is a calculation. Alto promises crossings over and under the tracks. They will not build bridges at every little road, she fears. Detours of 45 minutes round trip, on days that are already long.

A farm cut in two. The tractor’s route getting longer. The engine running for nothing, morning and evening. The fence running between the barn and the field.

The wall is no longer a landscape. It is a schedule.

And yet nothing has been traced yet. That is precisely what makes the wait so heavy: people are bracing to lose what they do not yet know.

The imagined wall becomes a daily detour.

What the public says

Commissioned by the UPA

The UPA had Quebecers surveyed by the firm Synopsis. It must be said up front: this is a poll commissioned by an interested party.

According to the UPA, support for high-speed rail drops from 69% to 59% once the project is presented in detail. Support for a high-frequency train rises from 67% to 73%. Between the two, 53% choose high-frequency rail, 26% high-speed rail.

After the presentation

Le Devoir specifies that the poll was conducted online, from August 12 to 17, among 1,100 respondents, and that no margin of error can be attributed to it.

I retain the movement more than the points. The more the project is explained, the less it appeals, according to this poll.

It is a clue. A slanted clue. Not proof.

The more they explain, the more people hesitate.

Who pays without deciding

The land, the municipality

Here is my verdict. Alto’s high-speed train shifts its cost onto those who did not choose.

The farmer pays in land, in detours, in uncertainty. The small municipality pays in administrative anxiety, with a C$1 million budget facing a project worth tens of billions.

And Mirabel pays twice in memory: once for the airport, once for the train.

The taxpayer

The taxpayer, for his part, pays for an estimate. A Class 5 range, says Transport Canada according to the UPA. The UPA calculates that with the usual margin of uncertainty for this kind of estimate, the bill could reach C$150 billion. That is its math, not Alto’s.

And the Mirabel resident, like any taxpayer, would pay without having read the study behind the choice.

The expropriation rule itself could change. In a Transport Canada FAQ reproduced by the City of Mirabel, the department expects expropriation to be an essential tool. Thousands of parcels, in two provinces and hundreds of municipalities.

Bill C-15 proposes that Alto no longer have to prove it tried to buy a property before seeking its expropriation.

Faster for the developer. Less time for the owner.

I admit it: I love fast trains. I would like to see this one succeed. That is exactly why I want to read the study.

Those who pay did not sign. They did not read either.

The route due this fall

This fall

What comes next is dated, more or less.

Alto is to present a refined route for the Montreal–Ottawa corridor this fall, Radio-Canada reported on September 19. The final route is not known, and the Crown corporation is still promising consultations, according to the article of the 25th.

Le Devoir puts the start of construction on the first section, Montreal–Ottawa, as early as 2029.

A window

Between Thursday’s packed room and the first shovel, a window remains.

A window to publish the study. A window to settle Mirabel’s request on federal land. A window to answer Jean Mercier.

The calendar is known. The study is not.

After that, the concrete will answer for everyone.

And yet a window closes fast. A law that speeds up expropriation, a route taking shape, a calendar pressing on.

The route is coming. The study should come first.

A wall, twice

An airport too big

At the start, there was a wall imagined by the side of a highway.

At the end, there are two walls. The one of 1969, which emptied fourteen villages for an airport that did not hold up. The one of 2026, which still exists only on a study corridor.

Mirabel knows better than anyone that a big project can get its size wrong.

Two walls. One town’s name. The same question.

A study no one may read

Who among us would agree to give up their land on the strength of a study they are not allowed to read?

The answer does not depend on the speed of the train.

It depends on a document.

1969 is back. The study still is not.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• City of Mirabel — council position and request on federal land, June 22, 2026
• Alto — why high-speed rather than high-frequency rail, costs and benefits, March 19, 2026
• UPA, Quebec’s farmers’ union — Alto high-speed rail file, updated September 14, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Radio-Canada — the Mirabel evening and the two experts, September 25, 2026
• Radio-Canada — the Rigaud protest and Alto’s compensation offers, September 19, 2026
• Radio-Canada OHdio — the long fight of Mirabel’s expropriated families, May 14, 2025