Via rail

[hipster duck]

When you think about it, it's obvious that Canada would prioritize freight over passenger railroads. We are a physically large country, with few navigable rivers, whose primary exports - particularly in western Canada - are bulk commodities. We have 2 of the 7 Class I railroads in North America, which is pretty impressive given our size, and both CN and CP extend their network well into the US.

We obviously know how to run freight railroads, and so our governments support them the best way they can, which is to get out of their way.

The bad news is that we have designed a railway system where moving anything other than non time-sensitive cargo would incur massive investment. It's a good example of a "market failure". Even if there's a huge pent up demand for passenger rail, and even if passenger services were still run by CN or CP, would these companies invest billions of dollars to build a totally parallel system of trackage so that they could run high frequency passenger trains? Probably not. It's better for them to stick to doing what they already do well, given that they know it makes money for them and that they have some natural monopoly over the transport of many of those commodities.