This is indeed a decision that will be extremely delicate to make, but for which the government must show courage.
The objectives of this massive investment are to shorten travel times, to promote greater complementarity among the various categories of transportation and to ensure that this can become an attractive competitive advantage.
If, unfortunately, you plan too many exits or stops, you run the risk of compromising one of the main objectives, which is to improve speed and frequency. That's why this is an important exercise. We need to focus on the most populous centres. That's why the Quebec City-Toronto corridor route, including Montreal and the stops in the initial project, is important.
After that, can greater networking with what already exists in outlying areas be improved? Of course.
However, as part of the initial project, if you want to resolve the situation of all travel between the various points by yielding to pressures that could be political, unfortunately I'm afraid you'll lose sight of the target and won't succeed in optimizing this investment in Canada for the years and decades to come.