CANADIAN RAILWAY

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 121, 28 November 1928, Page 11

CANADIAN RAILWAY

THE PUBLIC'S "BABY" (From "The Post's" Representativo.) OTTAWA, 22nd August. A deficit of approximately fifty millions sterling, with which tho Canadian National Railways began their career ten years ago, has been transferred to tho National Debt of Canada, ' amid general approval. No one connected with the present management of the Canadian National system was responsible for these debts, and they have been a millstone round the neck of an efficiently-directed public ownership enterprise. Sir Joseph Plavelle, noted Canadian financier, who was deputed by the Government to deal with the problem of the vast debts of the Grand Trunk and the Canadian Northern, made this proposal, seeing that there was no possibility of their being liquidated from earnings, even with incredibly -good fortune in the matter of profits. Sir- Joseph advised that only by such arrangement could the Canadian National be euabled to make a fair show. As a matter of business sanity, it .has been realised at last that tho country should bo in a position to know just where its public-owned railway system stands in its yearly operations. As matters stood, the debts, which wero incurred many years ago, could be used for any Mndof political argument, and were in a large degree responsible for tho confusion that existed in the mind of tho public as to the finances of the Canadian National. Sir Henry Thornton, president of the railway, believes that the system is now on a paying operating basis, and that deficits may no longer be anticipated, given reasonably good seasons and resultant traffic. There is no suggestion of repudiation; it is merely that Canada, instead of tho railway, shall, take care of tho responsibility it was necessary to assume when it was decided in the public interest to save the Grand Trunk and Canadian Northern from going to receiverships. In the meantime there is a generally unfavourable reception to demands made by an organisation known as "Grand Trunk Junior Stocks, Limited," formed in London to endeavour to get more money from Canada out of the assumption by the Dominion of the two systems. Tho people generally share tho opinion of railway experts that the, shareholders showed less zeal for efficient management of their affairs in former days than they have done since the control was taken over by the Federal Government.