• ikidd@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    When were the railways ever not private in Canada? One barely solvent passenger service that’s a crown corp hardly constituted nationalized rail.

    • Eiri@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      Wasn’t it originally a huge public undertaking? It was my understanding that the rails and CN began their lives in public ownership before being privatized.

      Did I misunderstand things?

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        The railways were built privately for the most part, and eventually most of them defaulted on loans and became CN. Which I guess was public for a long time, but competed with a number of private operators still like CP. Via was a heavily subsidized passenger crown corp because nobody could make passenger service profitable.