No Alto Rally Brings Quebec & Ontario Rural Reality To Parliament Hill

After organising on their own for months, and forging alliances with similar groups in Eastern Ontario, a contingent of Save South Frontenac members made their way, on their own or on a group bus, to a march and rally at Parliament Hill, last Wednesday (June 10).

In order to symbolise the alliance between No Alto groups on both sides of the Quebec-Ontario border, protestors met at the middle of the Alexandria Bridge to march in unison to Parliament Hill for a rally and speeches.

Up to a thousand people gathered at the hill, and a program of speeches demonstrating the breadth of opposition to the proposed high speed rail line to link Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, while traversing rural Quebec and Ontario.

Municipal and Federal politics were all in full display, led off by politicians from the Mirabel region.

Mirabel experienced large scale federal expropriation for the construction of the Mirabel Airport in the 1970s. The passenger terminal that was built at Mirabel has been demolished, and while the airport operates for cargo flights, it never took off as a passenger hub, even though at the time it was built, it was projected to serve 20 million passengers annually. Ninety thousand hectares of land were expropriated for Mirabel, and most of the land was never used.

Based on the speeches by Robert Charron, a municipal councillor in Mirabal who MC'd the event and spoke first, and Bloc Qubecois MP Jean Denis Garon who spoke next, the people in Mirabal have not forgotten about the airport project. And they find an echo in some of the claims being made about the Alto rail project.

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, flanked closely on the small stage by MPs from both sides of the border, (including Scott Reid from Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston and Shelby Kramp-Neuman from Prince Edward Hastings) delivered a stump-style speech, contrasting the Alto project and its $60-$90 billion projected price tag, to concerns over the cost of food in Canada today.

Farm groups from both sides of the border followed, talking more quietly than the politicians who had preceded them on stage, about the impact the project could have on their livelihoods, lifestyles, and ability to produce food.

“This is not about opposing progress, it’s about transparency, protecting communities, respecting taxpayers and focusing on the priorities that matter most to Canadians,” said Shelby-Kramp Neuman in a post following the rally.

The unifying theme of the rally was the oft repeated bilingual phrase, that every speech inevitably led to several times, NO ALTO.

While speakers at the rally frequently said people should raise their voices so the parliamentarians at the temporary parliament chambers across from the square surrounding the eternal flame could hear, the target for the protests is much broader.

The goal is to reveal any and all weaknesses in the way the Alto project is being organised and promoted, to convince Canadians not directly impacted by the proposed train, that it will indeed be expensive and ineffective.

And that was the message delivered on this cloudy day in Ottawa, as a major storm was headed towards Ottawa, that Alto could be a present-day Mirabel Airport, costing rural people their lands and livelihood, costing Canadian taxpayers money that should be spent elsewhere, and delivering little or no benefits