Hunter Harrison makes good on promise to change CP Rail culture

Check out this story about Transport Canada's "unprecedented" order against CP Rail to change their scheduling practices because they are an "immediate threat" to rail safety.

Reading the story, it's obvious that "Hitman" Harrison has succeeded in creating a culture of fear at the venerated CP Rail.

Now back up a few years, when Harrison was the widely lauded "new Sheriff" in town. Yup, he'd just trousered his fifty million dollar signing bonus from hedgie Bill Ackman, and he was gonna shake up that "spoiled, horrible, permissive" work culture at CP Rail.

Sounds like he's succeeded!

Those lucky folks still on the payroll now have a culture of fear instead of the awful spoiled, horrible, and permissive culture that prevailed in the Fred Green era!

But it's not all coming up posies at CP Rail...

Take a gander at the CPR share price history over the past five years. Ackman was loading up on shares back in 2011 when they were in the fifty dollar range. Peaked at well over two hundred in late 2014. By then Ackman had announced an ambitious share buy-back plan designed to drive the share price even higher.

Hasn't quite worked out that way. As of today, CP Rail shares have lost over half their value from that peak.

The think tank here at Falling Downs would like to think that our January 2014 research report had some small role to play in helping the markets get over their Ackman-Harrison euphoria.

It's high time I renamed this blog the "Bolshevik Bruce Research Report" or some such nonsense and fobbed it off as an "investment strategy advisory"...

...or some such nonsense. And of course charged big dollars for an annual subscription!

Maybe if I could get Todd Hirsch to do a guest spot once in awhile...

CPR's Hitman Harrison tired of being bullied, fights back

Yes, the 52 million dollar man has had enough!

Bullied near to death, he's been.

First of all, bullied by the City of Vancouver.

And if that isn't bad enough, bullied a thousand times over by the thousands of Vancouverites who have built wee bully gardens along the Arbutus rail corridor.

Enough is enough!

Canada pits rail workers against farmers to hide real reason bumper grain crop not making it to ports

Negotiations between the Teamsters union and CN Rail have been ongoing for many months. Now that the union has served notice that they intend to take a strike action, there is a sudden flury of activity on the other side. Not a sudden flury of getting serious at the bargaining table, but rather a sudden move to pass the ball to the Harper government.

And the Harper gang has wasted no time threatening the workers with back-to-work legislation even before they're off the job. Here's how CBC News spins the story;

They quote Labour Minister Kellie Leitch's grave concerns for the "impact a CN Rail strike will have on hard working Canadian farmers."

"Our economy must be protected, our products must reach market."

They throw in Conservative Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall's concerns that farmers can't get their grain to market now, let alone after a strike is called.

Those greedy union thugs are threatening to cripple the Canadian economy!

OH MY GOD!!!

Please Mr. Harper, PLEASE step in and save those prairie farmers!

But wait a minute... didn't Mr. Wall just say those prairie farmers can't get their grain to market even before a rail strike?

What gives?

Here's what gives; around all the ass-kissing pseudo-journalism that surrounded the release of CP Rail's record-setting Q4  results barely a week ago, you might have missed this gem; since Hunter Harrison took over he has "pulled 400 locomotives and 11,000 rail cars off the tracks."

Hmm... you don't think that pulling 11,000 rail cars off the tracks might have something to do with prairie farmers not being able to get their crops to market, do you?

And obviously, nobody is parking any of those unsafe code DOT 111 tank wagons off the tracks, because crude-by-rail traffic is skyrocketing.

So Canada's rail duopoly is letting grain rot on prairie sidings so they can chase the more lucrative and far more dangerous crude oil traffic, and when the railworkers announce a job action the Harper gang threatens back to work legislation because a strike would hurt prairie farmers?!

Bizarre, abusive, and profoundly dishonest. That's the way our rail conglomerates and their pals in government roll.