MONTREAL — VIA Rail Canada is reportedly prepared to award its contract for new equipment to German’s Siemens, to the dismay of officials in Quebec, the home of Bombardier, which is also competing for the project.
Montreal’s French-language La Presse reported, citing unidentified sources, that Siemens will receive the contract to build new equipment for VIA’s Quebec-Windsor corridor, an order worth about $1 billion Canadian ($753 million U.S.) VIA is planning to award the contract by the end of the year, a spokeswoman told Bloomberg News, but declined comment on the La Presse report.
In Ottawa, Transport Minister Marc Garneau told reporters that the Canadian government could not force VIA to choose Bombardier. “Our commitments with respect to free-trade agreements with Europe and other countries don’t allow us to favor Canadian companies,” Garneau said, according to the Bloomberg report.
Garneau’s stance was not greeted favorably in Quebec, Bloomberg reports. The province’s premier, Francois Legault, said “it makes no sense” for the federal government to allow VIA to award a contract without ensuring it creates jobs in Canada. Speaking to reporters in Quebec City, Legault said there should be, at a minimum, a 25 percent requirement for local content.
Garneau, however, said that while Quebec can require local content when it makes acqusitions, that cannot be done at the federal level.
Bombardier announced earlier this month that it will lay off 5,000 workers worldwide, half of them in Quebec. The majority of the Canadian job cuts are in the aerospace division, although a factory in La Pocatiere, Que., has begun laying off workers as it completes a contract for equipment for the Montreal subway.
In June, VIA identified Siemens and Bombardier as two of the four manufacturers competing for the contract. [See “Four companies will vie to build new VIA equipment,” Trains News Wire, June 28, 2018.]
