Am I happy that Dean Del Mastro wants high-speed rail for the Montreal-Toronto corridor (with a thoughtful little detour to Ottawa?) Absolutely. Am I really, really surprised because all along, I took Del Mastro for a gallumphing jamook without a policy bone in his body? Oh yeah, you bet. Words cannot express. So how to square the proposal and its source? Two ways, it seems to me:
Am I happy that Dean Del Mastro wants high-speed rail for the Montreal-Toronto corridor (with a thoughtful little detour to Ottawa?) Absolutely. Am I really, really surprised because all along, I took Del Mastro for a gallumphing jamook without a policy bone in his body? Oh yeah, you bet. Words cannot express. So how to square the proposal and its source? Two ways, it seems to me:
(Incidentally, here’s your soundtrack for this post. Click on the little speaker icons and you’ll get some rail-appropriate tunage.)
For arguments in favour of high-speed rail, read my definitive opus on the subject, written from the rolling French countryside. I should note that when that column ran, readers responded with the sound of crickets chirping, which is what I usually get when I turn all policy-wonk. But I did get a thoughtful email from a Senior Figure in the Harper crew, playfully contesting some of my assertions (hammering a TGV line through the Rockies: uh, not gonna happen) but not dismissing the idea outright. Based on this admittedly reed-thin shred of evidence, I now suspect Del Mastro’s little sortie did not catch a lot of people in Langevin by surprise. Indeed, here was a Shadowy Eminence in that very edifice yesterday, briefing reporters on the need for jumbo infrastructure outlays in the (oddly Martinesquely-dubbed) Most Important Budget Ever.
A few thoughts, then.
So to sum up: High-speed rail cannot help Canada through the current economic unpleasantness. But I believe longstanding arguments in its favour still hold. It is entirely possible that Del Mastro has become a bold free thinker. With best wishes to him for the new year, I hope he hasn’t.