Mr. Scott Reid, MP
This note is being written as a watchdog journalist and the founder of North Frontenac NewsMedia. It is not written as a partisan message. I am not a Liberal, and I am not a Conservative. I am writing because your recent Facebook video about Alto landed in our rural communities the way performative politics usually lands. It raised temperature, and it lowered leverage, and it caught my attention.
In your video you say you are opposed to Alto in both North Frontenac and South Frontenac and that the project “should be killed.” That is a clear stance. The problem is that your audience already knows the pressure points you covered. Cost. Expropriation fears. Environmental damage. Ottawa overreach. People have been discussing those concerns for months, and many have already been messaging your office about them. Repeating the same set of negatives to an already-alarmed audience is not constructive and only serves to rally fear. You ended the video by rallying your constituents “to oppose alto”. Respectfully, this is not your job.
This is the difference between opposition and leadership. Opposition is a statement. Leadership is a pathway. Your video delivers a statement, then it stops. It does not tell residents what you are doing inside the institutions that actually control this project. It does not describe a procedural route that could change the outcome. It does not clarify what “kill it” means in practice, what can realistically be stopped, what could be re-routed, what could be constrained, and what cannot. What can we expect then? You are just going to stand up in parliament and echo the facebook NIMBY popular points and hope your voice is considered? Is that the standard for our representation? Or are you going to address the actual elephant in the room?
Regardless if it makes you unpopular with your political friends?
You framed Alto inside a larger story about federal overreach. Let’s talk about that. That theme carries some personal animosity among a vast majority of Canadians, and it is part of why your words travel fast. If that is the frame you intend to use, it needs accuracy and discipline. As you know, in January 2026, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the Federal Court ruling on the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act and found the invocation unreasonable and beyond legal authority, with Charter infringements identified. That fact is a serious marker of institutional trust breakdown. It is also exactly why your messaging matters and it is where you failed to connect the dots that make up the bigger picture.
If the goal is to protect rural communities, the most useful public message from an MP is a public, written action record. What has been done in Parliament so far. What is being pursued next. What commitments have been sought from ministers and the Crown corporation. What legislative or regulatory mechanisms are being targeted. What guardrails are being demanded in writing. What timeline you are working on. Without those specifics, public anger gets redirected into neighbours-versus-neighbours conflict, and the file keeps moving.
In your video you described the Pickering Airport “catastrophe”, and now this Alto fiasco. You forget to mention the liberal governments overreach on the freedom convoy. I’ll spell it out for you:
Pickering Airport, Trudeau Sr, Liberals.
Freedom Convoy, Trudeau jr with consultation on record from Mark Carney, Liberals.
Freedom Convoy Appeal lost, Mark Carney, Liberals.
Alto C15 and HSR Act, Mark Carney, Liberals.
Your own examples and the freedom convoy issue point to the real issue. And it happens to be the plug we need to pull. People are not reacting to one project. They are reacting to a pattern of federal behaviour that keeps showing up under Liberal governments, from Pierre Trudeau to Justin Trudeau, and now under Prime Minister Mark Carney. That pattern is the central problem, and it’s systemic. Alto is just the newest arena where it is playing out.
Most people want results: accountability inside the system, not just outrage outside it. As the Member of Parliament, you have access to the decision-makers and the formal tools that ordinary residents do not. Rural communities do not need more alarm. They need evidence of pressure being applied where it counts, with receipts that can be read and measured.
If you want to be taken seriously as the rural firewall on Alto, your next public communication should read like a plan, not a release valve. I am asking for something simple and measurable: a clear, written outline of the specific steps you have taken and the next steps you will take, tied to the parts of the Alto file that you can actually influence.
NFNM will publish any response you choose to provide in full, alongside your action outline, so residents can judge outcomes instead of tone.
If your office wants to lead, the standard is straightforward. Public opposition has to be matched with measurable parliamentary action. All this video does is cry wolf. Rural Ontario has had enough of wolf-crying politics. “NIMBY” gets distorted when every file is framed as an apocalypse. This moment calls for discipline and direction. Hit the Liberal government where the decisions are being made. If the plan stays at fear, the result stays at fear. NFNM will report the difference.
You used your platform to rally residents “to oppose Alto”. Well sir, I see your rally, and raise it.
NFNM is calling on everyone who sees this article to message, comment, ask, Scott Reid MP, what are YOU doing about it?
1 613-947-2277
