A key advocate for the proposal, former Washington governor, Christine Gregoire, is rallying to double down on regional effort in the face of increasing federal tensions over Canada-U.S. trade.
Washington state officials want to double down on the planning for the proposed Cascadia high-speed rail link between Vancouver, Seattle and Portland despite the risks of a Canada-U.S. tariff war.
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The Cascadia high-speed rail initiative, which has been in the works since 2018, received a US$50 million commitment last December from the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration to support the planning work and advocate Christine Gregoire said they’ve been given no indication anything about that will change.
“We have no indication it will be interrupted,” said Gregoire, co-chairwoman of the cross-border Cascadia Innovation Corridor group. “To the contrary, the federal Railroad Authority told us to proceed, so we are moving forward.”
Gregoire, whose day job is CEO of Challenge Seattle, an industry group that represents 23 of Washington state’s biggest companies and is a former governor of the state, said emerging trade tensions between Canada and President Donald Trump’s administration make the effort more important.
“We import your crude oil, refine it and export it back to you,” Gregoire said. “We are very dependent on each other for power. You have a wildfire, we’re there to help you (and) vice versa.”
In total, about 40 per cent of Washington state’s workforce is directly or indirectly involved in its trade economy, so the prospect of Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports would be “devastating,” Gregoire said.
“Our economies are integrated, Washington and British Columbia, so we’re going to double down, quite frankly,” she added.
So far, Gregoire said she’s had positive political responses to her communications to reconfirm commitments. She said she’s travelled to B.C. and had “a good conversation with Premier (David) Eby,” and Washington state’s new governor, Bob Ferguson.
Eby’s office didn’t respond to Postmedia News’s request for comment by deadline Friday, but Gregoire said his word to her was B.C. “remains very much committed” to the high-speed rail project.
No timeline has been set, but the project carries a $24 billion to $42 billion cost estimate, which would be supported by a huge boost in tech-sector industries between the three jurisdictions.
Gregoire also hosted a webinar this week with some 80 participants in the Cascadia Innovation Corridor, “who are totally engaged and ready to go, as far as I can tell.”
If it holds, the US$50 million American federal grant, topped up with $5 million from the state, will go to Washington’s Department of Transportation to advance technical work for a service plan that identifies station locations and devises a governance plan.
It will require public engagement to be conducted by B.C.’s Transportation Ministry and departments in both jurisdictions. In total, the work “will take us up to the point where we need to do the environmental impact statement,” Gregoire said.
Not that there won’t be difficulties to overcome, including uncertainty about what will come out of the Trump administration’s scrutiny of federal spending, according to border diplomacy academic Laurie Trautman.
“What’s happening domestically in the U.S. right now is so unsettling and so disturbing that many of us who normally would be really advocating for the Canada-U.S. relationship are just trying to figure out what’s going to happen to our jobs and the federal government as a whole,” said Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University.
However, Trautman, who is also a representative to the Cascadia Innovation Corridor on border issues, said officials can’t lose sight of how important the cross-border relationship is, besides the sabre-rattling between Washington, D.C., and Ottawa.
She said there is a “delicate balancing act” to be maintained between Canada-U.S. relations at the federal level, “which is getting very ugly,” and what “friends and partners” at the regional level want to accomplish.
Trautman made the statement at a time that Eby has struck a cabinet committee to protect the province against threatened tariffs and reduce B.C.’s dependence on U.S. trade. He went as far as to ask British Columbians to reconsider U.S. vacation plans.
“There’s a lot of politics and a lot of optics,” Trautman said. “I think obviously the premier is probably in a position where that is a natural reaction (and) that’s probably what his constituents feel like they want to hear, (a) unified approach against the United States, given how they’re being treated.”
However, Trautman said beyond the politics and optics, and emotions of the situation, “there’s the reality of how much we actually depend on each other.”
Trautman added that it is as much Washington state being dependent on B.C. as the other way around, and officials need to get past politics.
“So, cutting through the noise and getting to the sort of non-emotional realities of our connection,” Trautman said. “That’s our future, working together, and if we aren’t working together, neither of us is going to benefit from that.”