Now, see if you can use it in a sentence. Say: "No, we will not give any money to Bombardier, Lavalin nor any of the other well-connected pseudo- capitalists pushing this insane scheme to run a high-speed train from Quebec City to Toronto. No, we will not underwrite the capital costs. No, we will not pay for any more feasibility studies. No, we will not give you a nickel." Then say it in French, just for emphasis.

It is only because successive ministers of transport, federal and provincial, have been so congenitally unable to say No – not if, not but, not maybe, just a crisp, unequivocal No – that this awkward industrial-policy absurdity has stayed on its legs for so long. In the latest version of a scheme that has obsessed some of Canadaís biggest corporate subsidy-seekers for decades, the taxpayers would be shaken down for fully two thirds of the $11-billion cost of the project.

That's almost $8-billion, if you're scoring, not counting interest and inflation, before a single construction worker has gone out on strike. This is, shall we say, audacious, even by Bombardier's standards. It is money we don't have, for a train we don't need, and what it lacks in economic principle it more than makes up for in its indifference to political reality. It is Hibernia squared.

So you would think that, even for a Liberal of the old school, this would be a cinch: No, you can't have any money, you ceaseless special pleaders. Now go away. Instead, listen to David Collenette squirm: "The big problem we've got is: Do we have the traffic to justify this in Canada, and can we afford it?" When a practicing politician even stops to ask such questions, you have a pretty good idea what the answer is.

So where does he stand? "I've been saying (for) the last year that what we want to do with passenger rail is get the private sector involved ... so the government doesn't have to put up money." Yes, yes, and? "This is a proposition that I understand involves some government money, so that's a departure from the kind of route that we've been taking." So the answer is no, right? Well, er, no. They're going to study it. That is to say, they're going to study the private-sector group's study, itself drafted in response to an earlier federal-provincial task force report, which built upon the work of previous task forces, studies and proposals, each one costing in the millions.

These make fascinating reading, not least for the escalating role envisioned for the taxpayer, both absolutely and as a proportion of the total cost. When Via Rail started talking up the plan in the late 1980s, the total cost was put at $2.4-billion, all in, to link Montreal and Toronto. By 1990, Bombardier had extended the proposed line all the way from Quebec City to Windsor, at a cost of $5.3-billion – one-third of which would be government money.

Via topped that in 1991, estimating the cost at $6.2-billion. The taxpayersí share, meanwhile, had risen to a little over one-half. That same year, a task force of the Ontario and Quebec governments suggested it would take $7.1- billion. Finally, in 1995, the High-Speed Rail Feasibility Study, financed jointly by the federal and provincial governments, put the total bill at $18.3- billion over 10 years.

That eye-popping figure was puffed up by financing costs and inflation. But what could not be fudged was the relative cost absorbed by the taxpayers: just about three-quarters, a few percentage points over what the developers are now pleased to call an "investment." The project director of the consortium, Jean-Paul Gourdeau, insists the project is a viable commercial proposition, claiming the government would earn a 12.4 per cent return on its share.

To which the answer is: then you don't need the government's money. If the plan is such a winner, why can't you get people to invest their own money in it? That doesn't mean that commercial criteria are the only basis for judging whether public funds should be involved. But the consortium's other arguments are no better. Even the environmental case, based on the number of car trips that would be replaced, is an argument for taxing road use, not subsidizing trains.

And even if you thought it a good idea to subsidize train travel, that would make the case for subsidizing the price of a ticket, not handing out billions of dollars upfront to the developers. Train-riding may be good for the environment. Track-laying is not.

No. No. No. Practice, minister. No. No. No...