Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise in this House, as it is every time. I would like to start, if I could, by giving a quick congratulations to both my son and my daughter, who made it to Speechfest at their school. They obviously got that oratory ability from their mother, not from me. I congratulate James and Maggie.
Of course, the substance of today's debate is the budget implementation act. I will be focusing on an area that particularly affects my riding of Northumberland—Clarke, and that is the Alto high-speed rail. My speech will mostly just be a direct conveyance of the comments that I have received from my riding on the potential impact of the expropriation and the abridgement of the private property rights of many of the property owners along the route.
Just so that people understand, the idea of having a high-speed rail service from Montreal to Quebec City, Ottawa and Toronto, stopping in Peterborough, the great city of Peterborough I might add, is an encouraging thing. That is a positive thing. If people could make it from Ottawa to Toronto in two hours, that is a positive thing, but there are significant challenges. I will go through some of the concerns that some of my residents have raised.
Number one is the impact it would have on their property. In some cases, there are individuals who have farms that have been their family's property for multiple generations, some going as far back as Confederation. That would end. Their property would be bisected, in many cases, by the proposed route. We still do not know what the final route is. I thank the minister for being direct and saying that the final route will be announced before the end of this year. That is positive.
What is not positive is that the minister, to my questions at committee, was not able to give any specific or concrete answers to questions such as these: When will expropriation begin, and how much notice will be given? Members can imagine being one of the residents of Northumberland County who has owned a farm through multiple generations and seeing a bill that proposes that, within a year, they will go from owning their property, which their family has owned for the last 150 years, to a point where it will be expropriated. The least the government could have done was give a defined process to these individuals before announcing the potential expropriation of their property. This should have been announced all at once, so people would be given notice and given a process.
The minister repeated over and over that this would just be common sense. Common sense is not quite good enough for someone whose entire life is wrapped around a rural community. That is where I have lived my whole life. It might be the same in urban communities, but I know for a fact that, in rural communities, people are very much defined by the property they own, the dirt that is underneath their feet. For someone to literally pull that rug from underneath them is a very scary proposition. In addition to that, for those folks who were not directly affected, the indirect impacts could be huge.
Therefore, like I said, I completely agree that being able to jump on a high-speed train going from Montreal to Toronto in three hours, or whatever the time will be exactly, is positive. What is not positive is if someone lives north of the proposed route and they need to get to Northumberland Hills Hospital, which is in the great city of Cobourg. Their drive could go from a 30- or 40-minute drive to two or three hours. The minister could not even tell me, and nor will Alto as of yet, where the crossings will be.
Let me explain. In my area, quite a few people live north of where the route would be, but there is a lot of the infrastructure for those various communities, including the Northumberland Hills Hospital, Highway 401 and, actually, the VIA train, and there are major routes that link those to the rest of the community.
They would put a steel fence all the way along the proposed route, which the minister said is only 60 metres, but it is still 60 metres. Regardless, even if it were just one metre, it is the idea of bisecting a community. Instead of driving directly to that hospital when their child has a fever or their dad has had a heart attack, people would then have to drive that extra time, which we do not know. It could be half an hour. It could be an hour to the east or the west to get to the hospital. It could literally mean the difference between life and death.
That is at the very extreme, but there are also other inconveniences that people in my riding, and in much of rural Quebec and rural Ontario, will have to deal with. There will be many instances where there are students on one side of the high-speed rail and their school on the other, which would lead to extended bus rides. It could go from a 10-minute bus ride to an hour bus ride. These are obviously a couple trips a day that we are now extending.
We also have our farmers, who might have their co-op, which is where a lot of farmers get their seed and their fertilizer. They will then have their fields on the other side. Once again, that can be really challenging because they are not always driving their truck. They could be driving their combine or their tractor. How are they going to get around that? Anyone who has driven a combine or been behind one knows they do not go particularly fast. Are they going to take an extra two or three hours in the middle of harvest?
Those of us who live in rural Canada would get this. Farmers will work around the clock during harvest season because they are at the mercy of Mother Nature for when they can harvest. While it is admirable to save people in Montreal and Toronto a couple of hours back and forth, it is anything but admirable to make rural students in Ontario and Quebec add hours to their day on buses. It is anything less than admirable to make Canada less able to feed ourselves because our farmers are less efficient since they have to drive for hours and hours.
In some cases, their same fields will actually be bisected. They will have to harvest one side and then find a crossing. The minister would not tell me if it will be an hour away or two hours away. We would be reducing their ability to be successful and reducing our ability to feed ourselves as Canadians. These are substantial challenges as we go forward and look at some of these issues.
I just want to read a couple of comments, specifically with respect to some of these questions. These are comments from some of my residents who have emailed or sent notes on social media: “It is extremely shocking to hear the minister speak in this manner, showing so little consideration and an apparent lack of understanding of his own territory. Telling citizens to ‘go meet with Alto’ when these...are merely courtesy information sessions—where staff...take notes without any real decision-making authority—is deeply frustrating.”
This is well put, too. The minister, throughout my questioning, kept putting it back on the residents, kept saying for them to go to Alto. Who is in charge here? I understand that the minister is ultimately in charge and that he should have the ultimate say.
One of my residents actually sums it up very nicely when he writes, “Why is it up to the people who live in these affected areas to tell Alto which roads and amenities are essential? Should this not be part of their own research done in consultation with municipalities prior to choosing a route? I've attended Alto sessions. They have no answers, only vague promises to do right by rural residents. I find this entire process to be disingenuous and flawed.”
Another comment says, “Thank you for this. If you have any further opportunity to ask questions, it would be important that Alto consults regarding the impacts of road severances and travel times for emergency services after the route has been chosen so that townships and residents can give more precise feedback.” The comment continues, “In the video it sounds like they are simply relying on this phase and public consultations to tell them about that.” The person commenting thinks they should be doing extensive research into these matters before making decisions.
They go on and they talk about the various ways this will affect people's lives. We understand and, like I said, it is admirable that we should be making life more convenient for the citizens of Toronto and Montreal, but let us not forget about the citizens of rural Quebec and rural Ontario.