Prime Minister Mark Carney announced on September 3 that the federal government is investing more than $4.7 billion for VIA Rail to acquire and maintain 313 new passenger rail cars. It is the largest such investment in the railway’s history, and the first time in four decades that VIA passenger cars will be built in Canada.
The cars will be manufactured and assembled by Alstom Canada in Thunder Bay, Ontario and La Pocatière, Quebec, with design and engineering work in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, Quebec. The government says the order will support nearly 700 jobs in Ontario and Quebec and generate more than $1.6 billion in economic benefits.
Combined with a previous $1.95 billion for 45 locomotives and a Montreal assembly and maintenance facility, total federal investment in renewing VIA’s long-distance, regional and remote fleet now exceeds $6.6 billion.
For a Toronto reader, the detail that matters is in the release itself. The 313 cars will serve VIA’s eight long-distance, regional and remote routes — explicitly those outside the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. Those eight routes together carried more than 216,000 passengers in 2025.
The Quebec City–Windsor Corridor is the segment that runs through Union Station and carries the overwhelming majority of VIA’s ridership. It is not part of this order.
That is not a criticism of the purchase. But an announcement of this size will be read in the GTA as news about Toronto–Ottawa and Toronto–Montreal trains, and on the government’s own description, it is not.
The release does not say what, if anything, this order means for Corridor equipment.
Source: Prime Minister’s Office news release, September 3, 2026.
