I will deal with the issue of profitability.
In our case, it was Canadian Pacific. When I moved to place Thomas-Valin, the first complaint we filed, as citizens, concerned poorly tuned locomotives, by which I mean they were burning their diesel fuel badly, and stationary locomotives that were left idling. We were very surprised to realize that fuel economy clearly did not particularly concern these people. As neighbours, we had trouble understanding how a business of this kind can carry out its day-to-day operations while wasting so much.
Moreover, I do not feel strongly that it should be the Canadian Transportation Agency rather than an other organization that should be in charge of the regulations. However, what was interesting at the time of the Canadian Transportation Agency, was that competent technical staff could, from what we had suggested, issue comments and criticism of a technical nature. They were in a position to discuss the feasibility of the solutions proposed by the engineers and the technicians.
For something to come of this, it is important that, within the federal government, there be competent technical experts, independent of the two or three major rail companies, who are able to discuss these kinds of issues as well as to comment and criticize the impressions of the three companies.