Ottawa Is Spending $4.7-Billion to Build New Via Rail Cars in Canada

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced on September 3, 2026, that the federal government will spend $4.7-billion to build and maintain more than 300 Via Rail passenger rail cars at facilities in Quebec and Thunder Bay, Ontario (The Globe and Mail).

Via Rail is a government-owned passenger train service. The 300 new cars will run on Via Rail's long-distance and remote routes, which connect communities outside the busy corridor between Québec City and Windsor, Ontario, where most Via Rail passengers travel.

Carney made the announcement in Thunder Bay. He described the purchase as a deliberate shift away from buying trains from the United States. The cars will be built in two places with long manufacturing histories: Thunder Bay, home to a rail-car plant now owned by the French company Alstom, and Quebec, where the federal government has been concentrating train-building work.

The $4.7-billion commitment follows an earlier one. In July 2026, Carney pledged $1.6-billion for 45 new Via Rail locomotives — the engines that pull passenger cars — plus a new assembly and maintenance facility in Montreal. Together, the two announcements direct more than $6-billion toward renewing Via Rail's fleet.

The approach marks a reversal. In December 2018, Via Rail awarded Siemens Canada a $989-million contract to build 32 trainsets for its corridor fleet. Those cars were assembled at Siemens' plant in Sacramento, California. The new $4.7-billion program brings car-building back to Canadian facilities instead.

Via Rail's 2019 fleet-replacement plan said the new fleet would be maintained in Canada by Via Rail employees at the corporation's Montreal and Toronto facilities over a 30-year service life. The September 3 announcement extends that maintenance commitment to the new long-distance and remote-route cars.

Ridership trends help explain the scale of the investment. Transport Canada's 2025 annual report, published in June 2026, states that Via Rail ridership reached about 4.4 million passengers in the Québec City–Windsor corridor, with passenger-miles up 2 per cent from the previous year (Transport Canada). Historical data show total annual passenger traffic grew 8.0 per cent to roughly 4.7 million in 2018 and 5.5 per cent to about 5.0 million in 2019, the most recent full pre-pandemic year on record.

The Via Rail commitment is the latest in a series of Carney government decisions changing Canada's transportation and industrial policy. In January 2026, Canada said it would allow up to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into the country at a low tariff rate following talks with Beijing (Reuters). In February 2026, Carney's government scrapped a national electric vehicle sales mandate that the Trudeau government had imposed in 2023, which required 20 per cent of all vehicles sold in 2026 to be emissions-free. That same month, Carney announced $2.3-billion in consumer incentives of up to $5,000 on EV purchases or leases (Reuters).

The broader pattern here is a Carney government approach that pairs fewer rules with direct public spending on Canadian-made products. On electric vehicles, the government removed the sales mandate but boosted consumer incentives and opened the door to Chinese manufacturers. On passenger rail, the federal government is not just funding Via Rail's needs but directing production to specific Canadian facilities in Quebec and Thunder Bay, rather than to a U.S. assembler as in the 2018 Siemens contract.

For Thunder Bay, the announcement carries particular weight. The city's rail-car manufacturing facility has seen its workload go up and down with the political cycle, and a 300-car order means years of production work in a region where federal industrial decisions have direct local consequences. For Quebec, the car-building commitment adds to the locomotive assembly and maintenance facility announced in July, concentrating a growing share of Via Rail's industrial work in the province.

The procurement also connects to the federal government's broader trade posture. Carney's framing of the Via Rail build as a shift from U.S. imports fits a trade agenda that has opened selective market access to Chinese EVs while investing in domestic rail manufacturing. Whether building the cars in Canada produces cost savings or faster delivery than buying from a foreign supplier is a question the announcement does not address. The 2018 Siemens contract, by contrast, delivered 32 trainsets at $989-million, a per-unit cost that invites comparison with the $4.7-billion price tag for 300 long-distance cars.

What remains to be determined is the procurement timeline, the specific car types to be produced, and whether the Quebec and Thunder Bay facilities can deliver the order without displacing other work. The September 3 announcement sets the funding and the political direction. The engineering, contracting and delivery details will follow.