I found a Fraser Institute report on the transportation performance of Canada’s provinces:
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/Comme...nceFigure6.pdf
Consider this:
Toronto’s metro population is 4.6 times Ottawa’s, but Toronto's population is only 1.4 times Montreal’s.
Annual air passenger traffic between Toronto and Montreal is 1.129 million, whereas between Ottawa and Toronto it’s 669,000.
Ottawa-Toronto air traffic is therefore a good 60% of Montreal-Toronto traffic, even though Montreal is a much larger city (in both actual population and relative to Toronto) than Ottawa is.
Bottom line: proponents of high speed rail in Quebec and Ontario would be foolish to not include Ottawa (in a Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal configuration) during the first stage of the project.