Jim Wickware

Pierre Poilievre opposing the $90 billion Liberal high-speed rail project has caused quite the controversy. Likely because the Laurentian Elite who loot Canadian taxpayers stand to gain BILLIONS and they want major backlash against anyone who threatens their impending goldmine of corruption. Let's do the math they don't want you to see.... The Base Cost: According to Joe Carson's "Diagnosis Red Tape," for every dollar paid in federal taxes, 26.72% never re-enters the private economy. It's consumed by bureaucracy. That means a $90B public project carries roughly $24B in administrative overhead. True taxpayer burden: ~$114B. There are roughly 20 million taxpayers in Canada. That's ~$5,700 per taxpayer, so that 12 million people in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor can have access to rail. EXCEPT THINGS NEVER GO ACCORDING TO PLAN Bent Flyvbjerg's database of 16,000+ megaprojects across 136 countries finds that 91.5% go over budget, over schedule, or both. The mean cost overrun is 62%. Rail projects specifically (according to Liberal friends McKinsey & Company) go over budget by an average of 44.7%, and their demand is overestimated by 51.4%. Applied to Alto: $114B × 1.447 = ~$165B. That's ~$8,250 per taxpayer. Meanwhile, the Liberals' projected $35B yearly GDP increase? If demand is overestimated by half, that's closer to $17B. Now, consider the recent Eglinton subway line in Toronto. The Eglinton Crosstown LRT was originally projected at ~$5B. Final cost: $13B and it took 15 years. The Eglinton Crosstown is 19km long. Alto is ~1,000km. That's 53× longer. The Eglinton Crosstown cost $684M per kilometre. If Alto hit a similar per-km cost, you'd be looking at $684B. That's obviously absurd but the point stands: Canada just proved it cannot build 19km of light rail on time or on budget. The answer is to build 1,000km of high-speed rail? The Eglinton's cost multiplied by 2.6×. Apply that same factor to Alto: $114B × 2.6 = ~$296B. That's ~$14,800 per taxpayer. But it gets EVEN WORSE. Now add corruption... The Charbonneau Commission established that mafia-linked cartels inflated Montreal public contract prices by up to 30%. A whistleblower told the Globe and Mail in 2009 that the Mafia controlled roughly 80% of road contracts, with prices inflated up to 35%. Then there's the "Green Slush Fund" scandal: the Auditor General found 186 conflicts of interest at SDTC, with an estimated $150-390M in misappropriated funds. That's roughly 17-45% of the fund's total approvals funnelled to insiders. Applied to Alto's $90B base: $15-40B in corruption. Applied to the Eglinton-style $296B scenario: $50-133B in corruption. Let's summarize, shall we? Best case (on budget, on time... which never happens): ~$114B total. ~$5,700 per taxpayer. Realistic case (Flyvbjerg's average rail overrun): ~$165B total. ~$8,250 per taxpayer. With half the promised GDP benefit. Eglinton case (2.6× cost escalation): ~$296B total. ~$14,800 per taxpayer. With corruption layered on top: $15-133B more (depending on the scenario) vanishing into the pockets of the politically connected. Also, don't forget: VIA Rail, the organization that would operate this system, currently can't run its existing trains on time. And that, my friends, is how you market corruption and economic insanity as "infrastructure investment."