Madam Chair, we're talking about the high-speed rail network act. The Minister of Transportation—who is also the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons—and the government keep telling us that this bill is similar to the one passed by Quebec's National Assembly for the REM, or the Réseau électrique métropolitain. I just want people to understand one simple thing. When you have two different problems, it is not always wise to apply the same solution. That's what we taught our students at university, and I think that's still the case. That hasn't changed much since I left five years ago.
The REM is a project that spans a few dozen kilometres. Its route is not linear; it can curve and easily use existing rights-of-way. What's more, it stops everywhere and has economic benefits everywhere. That's the context in which the project was developed. I know that Mr. Leitão was a minister at the time, if I'm not mistaken. The notion was that there wouldn't be many tracks, that the route would curve and make stops everywhere, so they decided to adopt a law.
Today, Mr. Leitão is telling us that for a 1,000-kilometre project, which cannot have a route that curves nor use existing rights-of-way, and whose train does not stop anywhere, the same law will be drafted. This argument makes absolutely no sense.
What happened is that the Department of Transportation botched the job. It made a law. It took existing models and analyzed the situation poorly. Then it realized that its train route didn't curve, and that the people who were being expropriated would probably want to exercise their bargaining power. So it thought it would take that right away from them.
They say they don't want to delay the project, but I'll tell you what happened with this law. For nearly a year, Alto, a quasi branch of the Liberal Party of Canada, shared a map of the route. It was like a GIF image, and was so blurry that you couldn't really tell where it went. On January 14, Alto published a 10-kilometre corridor that runs through places no one expected. It included Mirabel, but also other locations. This was not announced to mayors, city councillors, or MPPs. However, we received reports that Liberal MPs in my region were aware of it. It seems we are not all equal in this House, as far as Alto is concerned. On January 14, municipalities were informed—some found out on January 22, 23, or 24—that Alto would be coming to consult with them in 10 days, that it would be visiting them for business receptions and consultations. That's what they were told.
However, the engineering offices of cities such as Sainte-Thérèse, Mirabel, and Brownsburg-Chatham are not like those of SNC-Lavalin. Often, they are small teams juggling many different projects. The way their government operates, if two civil servants who are engineers extended their holiday vacations, the cities would be left completely stranded. Guess what? That's exactly what happened.
My colleague, whose riding is in Laval, says this isn't 1969. He's happy because he has a train station in his region. I'll tell you one thing. We know that my riding, Mirabel, is scarred by a series of expropriations. Highway 13, Highway 50, the Enbridge pipeline, power lines and GazMétro facilities were built there, but what is happening now has never happened before, because no one has ever been reckless enough to behave the way the federal government is behaving in 2026. People learned history's lessons.
It's fine for Quebec's former finance minister, Mr. Leitão, whom I greatly respect and who is very nice, to defend his government's position tooth and nail, but the government's current position on the high-speed rail network act is deceitful and untenable.