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The People's Railway: The Intercolonial Railway and the Canadian Public Enterprise Experience

W H E N SIR HENRY DRAYTON, Chairman of the Board of Railway Commissioners, and W.M. Acworth, a British railway authority, investigated the nature of the Canadian railway problem in 1917, they sought a solution through government action. In the Report of the Royal Commission on Transportation, the two men recommended that the government should assume the enormous financial responsibility for the Canadian Northern, Grand Trunk, Grand Trunk Pacific, National Transcontinental and Intercolonial railways. They also recommended that management of this publicly owned railway system should be vested in a board of trustees, independent of and not accountable to Parliament. Railways, the commissioners concluded, were not "a proper subject for direct Parliamentary control". The essence of their perspective on public ownership was captured in a polemic by W.H. Moore, who noted that "there is no maudlin sentiment about the 'people's railway' in this report; it is the 'trustees' railway' and the employees are the 'trustees' employees'. Everything about the railway is the trustees', except responsibility — that belongs to the people of Canada". While the Borden government did not create the kind of independent management recommended by Drayton and Acworth, the incorporation of Canadian National Railways in 1919 did limit the accountability of the new managers to both the government and Parliament. Each subsequent attempt to deal with the problems of Canada's public railway has been guided by the spirit of the Drayton-Acworth proposals, further reducing the railway's accountability to the public and their political representatives. Although the Grand Trunk Pacific