OTTAWA—The federal government’s high-speed rail agency, Alto, is getting new powers to speedily grab the land it needs and will be allowed to skip one major regulatory hurdle, under legislation contained in the Liberals’ budget bill.

The government has included the High Speed Rail Network Act within its more than 600-page budget bill. The legislation gives Alto, which is in charge of implementing and overseeing the proposed rail line from Toronto to Quebec City, expropriation powers and allows it to skip a key review from the Canada Transportation Agency (CTA).

Ordinarily, the CTA reviews any potential rail line in Canada to determine if the location is reasonable, but in the legislation the government is waiving that requirement for the roughly 1,000-kilometre, high-speed rail project.

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