diminutive
Active Member
Well, in this case you need to start with overcoming over well 100 years of regulatory and industry inertia. Sad as it is, but "that just isn't done" is still a relevant answer for them.
The reason this inertia exists is because TC rail regulations are soo far from peoples' minds that nobody really cares. Most Canadians don't know and don't care that these regulations exist, which let's ossified regulatory systems persist.
In cases where Federal legislators see public demand, they have responded by overrulling regulators. Look at 2007's Chalk River shutdown. The PM/Parliament disagreed with a decision taken by the CNSC/Linda Keen, went over its head and fired its CEO.
The thought of having cancer patients denied medical procedures because of a regulatory delay would have been a PR disaster, so the Govt turfed the CNSC. It's quite clear that it could do the same to any TC bureacrat who said "that just isn't done" if it saw any point in doing so.
It's possible that freight operators could be an opposition source to regulatory reform. Maybe some kind of blanket waiver for GO? That would leave most of CN/CP's business totally unaffected.
I'm not really close enough to the issue to give a detailed solution. It seems premature to say no compromise is reachable though given that nothing's really been tried.