(The following story by National Post reporter Andrew McIntosh appeared in the Montreal Gazette on October 7.)
MONTREAL — The Liberal government’s plan to revive passenger rail service by letting Via Rail spend $125 million on 139 new coaches has gone off the tracks, with the cost soaring to $235 million.
Among the reasons for the $110-million surge in costs is that workers had to move the location of washrooms deemed unsafe because they offered too little protection to passengers using them during a crash.
The news emerges as Transport Minister David Collenette prepares to ask his colleagues at a cabinet committee meeting today for a “significant” injection of additional subsidy money into Vial Rail operations.
The money Collenette has requested is earmarked to help the federal Crown corporation prepare for the arrival of costly high-speed trains in the next two decades.
Yet, the cost overruns incurred on the Renaissance rail-car project raise serious questions about Via Rail’s ability to manage such work and stay on budget.
“This is the kind of stuff that drives taxpayers crazy. These sorts of stories should wake Collenette up or his Liberal cabinet colleagues should wake him up from his train fetish,” said James Moore, a Canadian Alliance MP and transport critic.
“His priorities are out of whack. He has gone from being transport minister to being rail minister, handing out non-stop corporate welfare for Via Rail and Bombardier, while refusing to eliminate the flawed air-security tax.”
Jim Gouk, another Canadian Alliance MP who monitors Via Rail, said the cars purchased “were a joke.”
On Dec. 15, 2000, Via Rail announced with fanfare that it had received government permission to buy 47 passenger coach cars, 20 service cars with a lounge and restaurant and 72 sleeper cars from European manufacturer Alstom.
The cars, built in the mid-1990s for the British government at a British Alstom plant but which never went into service, were to be shipped to Canada and re-
assembled and refurbished at a Bombardier plant in Thunder Bay, Ont.
The total cost for the acquisition and all modifications and upgrades was to be $125 million, Via Rail said at the time.
“It was too good a deal to refuse,” Collenette told reporters at Montreal’s Central Station. “We got an incredible deal for the Canadian taxpayer.”
Critics of the deal immediately warned that the new cars did not meet Canadian standards for collision protection or accessibility for disabled passengers.
Those concerns were dismissed by Via Rail and the Liberal government.
Fast forward to 2003 – to Collenette eating humble pie.
Testifying before the Commons transport committee just before Parliament rose for the summer, Collenette made some stunning, little-noticed remarks.
He told MPs only 106 of the 139 cars have so far been modified at the Bombardier facility in northern Ontario. That work has already cost $165 million.
Helena Borges, executive director of rail policy at Transport Canada, then testified Via Rail needed “about another $70 million” to refurbish the remaining 33 cars.