Canadian<\/em>g rabbed headlines and showed a small profit in its first years.\u00a0 It drew on three markets:\u00a0 Tourists making long-distance trips, intercity travellers on shorter trips and residents of isolated communities who lacked other travel options.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
However, Crump said it burned his caboose to see public money being stuffed into the Trans-Canada Highway immediately adjacent to the route of his privately-funded trains.\u00a0 Not far away were publicly-owned airports built to prop up Crown-owned Trans-Canada Airlines (now Air Canada), which was the expensive plaything of Liberal \u201cMinister of Everything\u201d C.D. Howe.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The slender profitability of the CP and CN passenger trains evaporated.\u00a0 Howe\u2019s shifting of the lucrative railway mail traffic to his airline was yet more enterprise denied at public cost.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
VIA was created in 1977 to relieve the two railways of the red ink being generated by the remaining passenger trains, which were being bludgeoned by heavy public spending on every transportation mode \u2013 except trains.\u00a0 Politically hog tied from the outset, VIA won back lost passengers, but at high cost due to its lack of modernization.\u00a0 The Trudeau government that had created VIA then knocked off a fifth of its trains in 1981.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On the 1984 campaign trail, the Mulroney Conservatives said they\u2019d put it all back, promising to \u201ccreate a public excitement about going by train.\u201d\u00a0 But heavily influenced by vested interests, including bus line owner Paul Martin, they ignored their own Rail Passenger Action Force\u2019s warning:\u00a0 \u201cWe know of no other way to stop the drain of government funds to VIA than to modernize the corporation; in fact, the only alternative is to scrap it completely.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After reinstating several trains cut by the Liberals, the Tories rejected the recommendation that new, Canadian-built high-performance equipment be bought to drastically cut VIA\u2019s subsidy.\u00a0 Instead, half of the system was hacked away in 1990, including VIA\u2019s Canadian\u00a0<\/em>on the CP route.\u00a0 It was ham-handedly combined with the former CN Super Continental\u00a0<\/em>and reduced from daily to tri-weekly and then to bi-weekly service for all but a few summer months.\u00a0 The original CP equipment was beautifully restored as a luxury train with some lower-cost coach seats thrown in for those unable to afford the upscale accommodations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Today, VIA\u2019s Canadian <\/em>really only serves a high-end market.\u00a0 It is bitterly resented by those who can\u2019t afford its high fares and can\u2019t make use of its erratic and unreliable schedule.\u00a0 Who could blame them?\u00a0 Their tax dollars are shoring up a service that\u2019s beyond their reach.\u00a0 But at a time when residents of northern Ontario and the Prairies have lost bus service and have few or no air options, cost-effective rail passenger service is required more than ever.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
VIA\u2019s publicly-funded U.S. equivalent, Amtrak, provides the answer.\u00a0 Despite unsuccessful attempts by some politicians to dismantle it, Amtrak operates several trains on long-haul routes similar to the Canadian\u2019s.\u00a0 They use the double-deck equipment the Mulroney government rejected for VIA \u2013 some of it built by Bombardier in the 1990s.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As a result, Amtrak\u2019s daily Chicago-Seattle\/Portland Empire Builder<\/em>\u2013 named for Ontario-born railway baron James J. Hill, \u201cthe Empire Builder of the Pacific Northwest\u201d \u2013 offfers more than three times the service and carries five times more passengers than VIA\u2019s Canadian<\/em>.\u00a0 The Empire Builder\u2019s<\/em>per-passenger subsidy is one-third of the Canadian<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Public transportation is vital to the economic, social and environmental health of any nation.\u00a0 Those nations with which Canada competes all have modern and efficient rail passenger systems.\u00a0 A failure to re-envision, re-equip and re-staff VIA will only make Canada less mobile, accessible and attractive to investors.\u00a0 Investing public funds in rebuilding it \u2013 including the flagship Canadian<\/em>\u2013 would pay back three times its investment in economic spinoff and job creation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Any recommendation that VIA\u2019s Canadian\u00a0<\/em>and its other trains be euthanized is simplistic and just plain wrong.\u00a0 The equation I put at the top of all my consulting reports is simple and clear:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Mobility + Access = Destiny.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Greg Gormick\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>is a nationally-known rail analyst and policy adviser, whose clients have included VIA, CP and CN, and elected officials of four political parties.\u00a0 <\/em>He is the author of the forthcoming book, Railroaded: The Life and Near-Death of Canada\u2019s Passenger Trains.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dear Brenda, National Post\u00a0columnist Chris Selley says he wants VIA Rail\u2019s transcontinental train axed: https:\/\/nationalpost.com\/opinion\/chris-selley-lets-kill-the-canadian-surely-the-first-worlds-most-dysfunctional-train While I share some of Selley\u2019s concerns, he misses key points that are vital to any debate about the train\u2019s future. When it was launched in 1955, The Canadian\u00a0was the pride and joy of privately-owned Canadian Pacific …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216,2870],"tags":[2326],"class_list":["post-28937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorials","category-rroaded","tag-rail"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 15:57:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28938,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28937\/revisions\/28938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}