---
title: "Alstom Scales Up a Quebec Train Factory for a $4.7 Billion VIA Rail Contract"
description: "After layoffs cut its work force to about 150, the La Pocatière plant now employs roughly 550 people amid a push to buy Canadian"
author: "rews desk"
published: 2026-10-02T08:00:00Z
modified: 2026-10-02T11:14:10Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/alstom-scales-up-a-quebec-train-factory-for-a-4-7-billion-vi-cf1895
language: en
tags: ["infrastructure", "manufacturing", "trade", "labor", "ai", "us", "europe"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Alstom Scales Up a Quebec Train Factory for a $4.7 Billion VIA Rail Contract

*After layoffs cut its work force to about 150, the La Pocatière plant now employs roughly 550 people amid a push to buy Canadian*

By rews desk · October 2, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/alstom-scales-up-a-quebec-train-factory-for-a-4-7-billion-vi-cf1895

## In brief

- Alstom’s La Pocatière, Que., plant is expanding and hiring, lifted by domestic rail orders including a $4.7 billion VIA Rail contract
- Employment fell from over 1,000 in the 1990s to about 150 in 2021, and now stands near 550
- U.S. Buy America rules effectively closed the market south of the border, an Alstom executive said
- VIA Rail work will run nearly a decade, with cars built in La Pocatière and final assembly in Thunder Bay
- In 2018, a $989 million VIA Rail corridor contract went to Siemens, whose cars were built in California

A train factory in Quebec that came close to shutting down five years ago is expanding and preparing to hire, as new orders from Canadian governments keep coming in, including a $4.7 billion contract to build long-distance passenger cars for VIA Rail.

For Claude Michaud, who has worked at the Alstom plant in La Pocatière, Que., for much of the past 34 years, the sound of welding and ringing steel is a sign of better days. The town, about 140 kilometres northeast of Quebec City, has roughly 6,000 people, and the plant has long been one of the region’s largest employers.

“There’s pride in building trains at home for people here in Canada,” Mr. Michaud said in French. “It’s a positive change.”

Alstom, a French company that completed its acquisition of Bombardier’s rail-building division in 2021 and keeps its Americas headquarters in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, Que., is building rail cars for Vancouver’s SkyTrain, subway trains for the Toronto Transit Commission and vehicles for a new Quebec City tramway. Work on the VIA Rail contract is to begin soon.

The plant’s revival follows a steep decline. Employment there, which topped 1,000 in the 1990s, fell to about 150 people by 2021, according to Alstom and the union, after the factory became heavily dependent on export projects, many of them for the United States. There are roughly 550 employees now, and the company is preparing to add more.

Olivier Marcil, Alstom’s vice-president of public affairs for Canada, said increasingly protectionist policies in the United States had effectively shut the American market to the plant. The U.S. Federal Transit Administration’s Buy America rules require that buses, trains and ferries bought with federal money be made in the United States, and the threshold for domestic components rose between 2016 and 2021.

“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,” Mr. Marcil said. “If everybody’s protecting their industry, everybody’s nurturing their industry — Canada must come at par with those and do the same.”

Bringing manufacturing back will not be simple, said 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. “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,” he said. “The problem is, if you don’t do it for 20 to 30 years you lose the skills.”

The VIA Rail project alone will keep the factory busy for nearly a decade, and a 15-year agreement covering technical support and spare parts will support additional jobs. The long-distance cars will be built in La Pocatière, with final assembly in Thunder Bay. Frédéric Platteeuw, Alstom’s site manager there, said the plant would have to rework itself around the Crown corporation’s contract.

“It’s a real challenge, such a project, because it will push us to rethink all the layout,” Mr. Platteeuw said. “To optimize our surface, to optimize our work, to develop new technology.”

Mr. Michaud, a union leader, pushed for years for the federal government to require Canadian content in its train purchases. A low point came in 2018, when VIA Rail awarded a $989 million contract for its Quebec City-Windsor corridor fleet to the German company Siemens, which built the cars in California.

His father built the first cars to roll out of the La Pocatière plant, for the Montreal Metro, and other members of his family work there. “We see that the government is finally listening,” Mr. Michaud said. “A dollar invested in Quebec and in Canada is money that stays in our country.”