CP Rail tries to derail Lac Megantic settlement

Everybody with a finger in the tragic Lac Megantic pie has agreed a settlement.

Everybody, that is, except the US hedge fund Pershing Square which managed to hijack the iconic Canadian company with a mere 10% share-holding.

According to CP Rail, the race to the bottom in railroad safety had nothing to do with them.

They had nothing to do with the small-time operators like "Fast Eddie" Burkhardt, the guy who owned the train that destroyed Lac Megantic.

Fast Eddie is the guy who figured out a crew of two in a railroad locomotive was a safety hazard, because when you got two guys in the locomotive, by golly, they just gonna be distracting one another.

Two mile long tar-sludge tanker trains just gonna be safer with one guy in the cab, not two.

For their part, CP Rail likes to brag about how they revolutionized rail transport in Canada by making trains longer, running them faster, and firing thousands of employees.

Yup, can't see no safety issues there...

Meanwhile, the hedge fund shit-bags who were allowed to rape this iconic Canadian company are going full steam ahead on their share buy-back plan.

Share buy-backs are about as useful to a company as lighting a boxcar full of hundred dollar bills on fire. It's using company cash to artificially pump up earnings-per-share and all that other stuff the money geeks fret over. The intent is to goose share value.

In the case of CP Rail, the share price has tanked about 20% since the Ackman crew started the buy-back.

Luckily, they've still got a few dollars left over to pursue appeals of the Lac Megantic settlement.

CP Rail strike a case study in who the government works for

That popping noise you heard all over Ottawa this week is the sound of sphincters snapping shut as the outrage of a worker's strike at the venerable railroad sent the Harper gang into a tizzy.

Labor Minister Lisa Raitt had a plan to order the CPR strikers back to work within minutes of the strike.

After all, CPR is vital to the Canadian economy, don't you know!

How dare those molly-coddled workers threaten the Canadian economy like that!

Quick, let's legislate them back to work!

Contrast that to the government's reaction when a foreign hedge fund takes a minority stake in the company and starts a bully campaign to turn CPR's corporate culture upside down.

Nothing.

Where are the guardians of the Canadian economy when that happens? Nowhere to be seen.

Heavy handed legislation is reserved for whipping workers into line. How dare those unionized layabouts threaten the economy like that?

We'll fix 'em!