Mr. Speaker, in the end, the cost is going to be zero, because there is no way that this insane project is actually going to make its way through. We do not have the money to spend $90 billion, which is the estimate. We do not have the money for that. We will spend $3 billion or $4 billion, do a series of expropriations and destroy lives, and then, like the Pickering airport, it will be shut down, unfinished, with no benefit except to the consultants. That is what is going to happen.
However, in the event it actually went through, there is a fascinating estimate. Alto projects 24 million riders per year, which turns out to be significantly higher than the number of people travelling between Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto right now by rail, air and road combined, so somehow, people who are not travelling at all would start travelling because of this amazing transportation hub.
We have a pretty good idea that, in practice, if the costs are not very low and the speed is not high, people do not tend to shift to rail unless the travel time is under two hours. Therefore, it is not likely to generate the expected ridership. That means that revenues would be very low and the subsidies would be in the multiple billions of dollars every year. Again, we cannot afford this.
I suspect that if anything does get built, it will be the Ottawa to Montreal part, at which point the low ridership would show that the whole thing was a catastrophe and we would stop halfway through, much like we did with the Mirabel airport. It was going to be a giant airport, but once we saw the insane costs and the low usage, the whole thing was shut down.