This may be more perception than fact, so feel free to straighten me out if I'm leading you down the wrong path.
It seems that short-line operations in Canada arise in part out of the fact that some of these operations were not economically profitable, or at least sustainable for the main-line railroads. We've created a class of railway operation in Canada that may be susceptible to weak economic performance and the risk, or at least the perception of a risk, that things like safety will be ignored because there's simply not the money to turn a profit and make it all work.
There was to have been an audit of the short-line railways completed in early 2015. Has that been completed, and if it has, what were the findings?