Quebec train factory booming as Alstom expands for VIA Rail contract and domestic demand

A French rail manufacturer's Quebec factory is experiencing its strongest period in decades, reversing years of decline and layoffs as Canadian domestic demand and Buy Canadian policies fuel expansion.

Alstom's plant in La Pocatière, a town of about 6,000 people located 140 kilometres northeast of Quebec City, is expanding its factory floor and preparing to hire more staff. Claude Michaud, who has worked at the plant for 34 years, is witnessing a turnaround after waves of layoffs and uneven production ravaged the facility. In the 1990s, the plant employed more than 1,000 people. By 2021, that had collapsed to about 150 — a decline that threatened the plant's viability. The workforce now stands at about 550 and climbing.

Alstom, a French company with Americas headquarters in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, acquired Bombardier's rail-building division in 2021. The company is already building rail cars for Vancouver's SkyTrain and subway trains for Toronto Transit Commission. It will also build vehicles for Quebec City's new tramway.

The major catalyst is a $4.7-billion federal contract to build long-distance passenger cars for VIA Rail — work that will generate manufacturing jobs for nearly a decade, plus a 15-year agreement for technical support and spare parts. The scale of work represents a fundamental shift in the plant's economics. "When you look at the megatrend that we've experienced over the last decades — the United States were asking a lot from manufacturers to build local, right? While Canada was not asking anything," said Olivier Marcil, Alstom's vice-president of public affairs for Canada. "If everybody's protecting their industry, everybody's nurturing their industry — Canada must come at par with those and do the same."

The U.S. Federal Transit Administration's Buy America policy requires projects receiving federal funding to use materials and final products manufactured in the United States. That threshold was raised between 2016 and 2021, forcing manufacturers to source domestically. Canada's shift toward similar policies is now creating Canadian manufacturing work that had migrated elsewhere.

Dan Breznitz, a professor at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy who studies how innovation and government policy affect industries, cautioned that rebuilding a manufacturing base takes sustained commitment. "We have to find the people, we have to find the manufacturing, we have to find the other factories that produce everything that you need to make rail," Breznitz said. "The problem is, if you don't do it for 20 to 30 years you lose the skills." The VIA Rail project is a test of whether Canada can keep those skills alive.