VIA Rail

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by roger1818

Fat chance. Ad J81 said, “ For whatever reason our government refuses to look into this avenue.”

It actually isn’t quite that cut and dry though. South of the border, the railroads asked for relief from the responsibility of operating passenger service, and the government agreed to take it over on the condition that they give passenger trains priority and that’s how Amtrak was formed.

North of the boarder, P.E.T. wanted to do the same thing so he split the passenger and freight devisions of CN into separate Crown Corporations and this formed VIA Rail. Since they were both Crown Corporations, VIA’s priority was assured. Within a couple years, it became obvious to VIA that to be successful they would also need to take over CP’s passenger services. As a negotiating tactic, CP pretended to not want to give it up. Sonce VIA seemed more desperate to awuire it than CP was to dispose of it, it was easy for CP to avoid that clause.

Years later, when CN was privatized under Mulroney, since VIA didn’t have priority on CP’s tracks, why should they have priority on CN’s tracks. Besides, Mulroney wasn’t a huge fan of VIA anyway and waving that right likely allowed them to sell it for more.

I don't assume it would be easy, or even straight forward. I do assume that he could get the support from the NDP for this. The cons will fight him tooth and nail.

It almost sounds like the one that axed Via and sold off CN is the real culprit.