Canadian Pacific CEO wants more Canada-U.S. consistency on rail rules

CALGARY – The CEO of Canadian Pacific Railway says he’d like to see Canada and the U.S. work together on rail regulations — though he admits it may be difficult to pull off.

Hunter Harrison says the company is trying to talk to regulators in Washington and Ottawa about how the lack of consistency is hurting business.

He says sometimes a locomotive is able to move on one side of the border but not the other.

Harrison concedes his call for more bilateral agreements may be “too much of a reach,” calling it “almost a dream.”

But he says more collaboration with U.S. regulators makes sense in light of recent changes to rules around interswitching— the ability for customers captive to one railway to move shipments from one network to another at federally-regulated rates.

Ottawa, in a move to improve service to Prairie grain elevators that, for the most part, have access to only one railway, has increased the radius for inter-switching from 30 kilometres to 160 kilometres in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba — in theory, enabling connections with U.S. railways.