Canada’s grand ambitions to connect the country with the world’s most advanced transportation technology stretch back to before Confederation. That dream—to stitch together distant regions and boost economic development—materialized in the government-driven Canadian Pacific Railway, which was, for a while, the longest rail system on Earth.

A century and a half later, new advancements have entrepreneurs and nations lunging at the chance to be the next leader in the burgeoning transportation technology known as hyperloop, a system designed to transport cargo and passengers through low-pressure tubes at speeds of over 1,000 kilometres per hour.

NASA scientists believe that hyperloop could be a faster and cheaper alternative to air travel for flights under 500 miles (800 kilometres). The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates the technology would be six times more energy efficient than short-haul flights, and three times faster than today’s fastest high-speed trains. Those capabilities would not just revolutionize passenger travel in Canada between, say, Toronto and Waterloo, but help streamline resource transportation across the country’s enormous geography.

Yet Canada, the only G7 country without any form of high-speed transportation, has been slow to foster the emerging technology. That’s despite the federal government’s Transportation 2030 initiative, a plan to modernize the transportation sector, which includes a mandate to “encourage the use of new technologies.”

Sebastien Gendron, co-founder and CEO of Canadian hyperloop company TransPod Inc., says he has not seen evidence the government is taking that mandate seriously. “They’ve been no support at all,” he says of his experience seeking R&D funding and political support at home.

That hasn’t stopped TransPod, headquartered in Toronto’s MaRS innovation hub, from moving forward in testing its patented technology outside of Canada. On Friday, the company filed an application with officials in the Haute-Vienne region of southern France to build a three-kilometre test track. TransPod has an R&D facility in Bari, Italy, where it also hopes to build a track, and in June, the company was named to a consortium of hyperloop companies tasked by the EU to build a global-standards framework for the industry.

At home, though, support has not come easily. “People told me at the beginning that Canada is risk-averse,” says Gendron, an aerospace engineer who moved to Canada from France in 2010 to work for Bombardier. “I still want to believe it’s not true, but sometimes it’s kind of painful. Maybe [they were] right.”

When Elon Musk first floated the idea of hyperloop in a 2013 white paper, the concept seemed like a fantasy. It described people commuting through a tube-like system in pods “supported on a cushion of air” that—propelled by magnetic force—would travel at the speed of sound.

Since then, entrepreneurs have been rushing to connect cities around the world via hyperloop. Musk’s own Boring Company has preliminary approval to build a test track in Washington, D.C. for an eventual New York-Philadelphia-Baltimore hyperloop. Virgin Hyperloop One, chaired by billionaire Sir Richard Branson, has developed a full-scale test track in the Nevada desert. The company announced in July that it is moving forward with plans to build a hyperloop route in India between Mumbai and Pune, on top of ongoing projects in France and Spain. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, another U.S. company, has licensed its technology to the government of South Korea, and has a preliminary agreement to develop a hyperloop system between Bratislava in Slovakia and the Czech cities of Brno and Prague.

In a global competition held by Virgin Hyperloop One last September, the route between Toronto and Montreal was identified as one of the 10 most viable corridors in the world for a hyperloop system out of the 2600 routes that were considered. The company cites Canada’s “bold commitment to enhancing its infrastructure” as a reason for being selected.

A Toronto-Montreal hyperloop was originally the top priority for TransPod, which estimates it would cost $15 billion to build the system (land costs not included), and would reduce travel time to 45 minutes. But when Gendron and his team brought their vision to the Ontario and Quebec governments, they were met with disinterest.

Gendron is still hopeful that Ontario in particular will come around. He has aspirations to partner with the government on its proposed high-speed transportation line from Toronto to Windsor (the corridor would include a stop in Kitchener-Waterloo, relieving significant transit woes between the neighbouring innovation hubs). TransPod claims their technology would cost roughly half of the government’s projected $21 billion to build a more traditional high-speed rail line. “We are always open to learning more about new technologies, such as hyperloops, and how they could be used in Ontario,” wrote a spokesperson for John Yakabuski, Ontario’s Minister of Transportation, in an email to The Logic. “There needs to be a strong business case and sufficient rider demand for such a service to move forward.”

At the federal level, TransPod has received words of encouragement from Marc Garneau, the minister of transportation. But Gendron says it’s the department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) whose support he’s been waiting on. The company submitted an application to the department’s Strategic Innovation Fund a year ago and has yet to hear from Bains’ office (ISED did not reply to The Logic’s request to comment for the article).

“We see a disconnect between the announcement from Navdeep Bains’ ministry and what’s currently happening in terms of innovation,” says Gendron. “If you want to support the future and transportation systems, even if you don’t support TransPod, it’s fine, but there are many companies like us that develop good projects and really need support to grow, and we aren’t seeing that.”

In a statement to The Logic, a spokesperson for the federal Ministry of Transportation said, “Innovation in the transportation sector features prominently in [Transportation 2030],” and that “the successful international commercialization of hyperloop technology is something that the Government of Canada is watching closely.”

Gendron notes that his company isn’t asking for big investments from governments. They’ve raised close to $40 million from investors (many of them in Italy), and expect to double that in an upcoming fundraise, in which Gendron says several major Canadian pension funds and construction companies intend to participate. “[Government funding] is not what we’re looking for for now,” he says. “It’s political support to be able to leverage private funds.”

Indeed, it’s possible that policymakers are taking an interest in hyperloop, just not in TransPod. Dan Katz, director of public policy and North American projects at Virgin Hyperloop One, says he’s had different experience with Canadian officials than the one Gendron describes. “We’ve had meetings and discussions with both Transport Canada and ISED, and officials at the provincial level, about our interest in Canada,” says Katz, who led a delegation to Ottawa in 2017 to brief the government on the company’s technology and business model. “We continue to work with them, and we’ve had a very good experience.”

Beyond their interest in building a hyperloop from Toronto to Montreal, Virgin Hyperloop One is eyeing Canada as a potential location for a research and development facility. “Canada has got incredibly great talent in engineering, AI—the whole range of things we need for development of our systems,” says Katz. “So we’ve talked to the government both about hyperloop projects and potentially citing an R&D facility in Canada.”

Virgin Hyperloop One plans to have a fully built hyperloop constructed and ready for testing and certification by 2023. TransPod estimates they’ll be at that stage by 2030.

Martin Collier, a transportation planning consultant and founder of Transport Futures, isn’t surprised the government may be taking a keener interest in TransPod’s bigger U.S. competitor. “I think the way government goes right now is they tend to go with the companies that have a strong track record and who are well capitalized,” says Collier. The projects would likely go ahead as public-private-partnerships, Collier explains, in which case the hyperloop company could be responsible for designing, building and operating the system, and the government would regulate it and share some financing responsibilities. Partnering with an established, well-funded company reduces risk for the government.

In prioritizing fiscal prudence in the short-term over innovation, Canada is deviating from its early tradition at the bleeding edge of transportation technology. “More than anything, our goal is to develop export capabilities, to create high-tech jobs and intellectual property to export, and keep Canada at the forefront of innovation,” says Gendron. “In their speeches, Navdeep Bains and Prime Minister Trudeau tell us Canada has to be bold. But when it comes time to walk the talk, it’s another story.”

Though frustrated, Gendron is not yet discouraged. The company is finally seeing signs that their persistence in Canada may pay off. The government of Alberta is reviewing a proposal to test TransPod’s hyperloop along a stretch of Highway 2, between Calgary and Edmonton, in what could be the biggest step yet for any Canadian region into the realm of ultra-high-speed transportation. Alberta’s Ministry of Transportation told The Logic they’re considering leasing provincially-owned land to TransPod to develop a the test track. If all goes to plan, the 10-kilometre track will be finished by 2022 and form a segment of a complete route between the two cities around 2030.

“I remain optimistic,” says Gendron. “Alberta is a good example of that paying off.”

Follow The Logic on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (@the_logic), and sign up for the Daily Briefing newsletter.