100 years at the heart of transportation : Centennial historical perspective of the Canadian Transportation Agency and its predecessors

These codes of practice were hammered The role of transportation regulation has out by the Agency, the community of always been to balance the interests of persons with disabilities and the carriers; shippers and consumers against the of course, they involved lots of consulta- interests of carriers. [...] However, as the Ottawa Citizen of the country on the one hand, and the noted on February 2, in a procedural great and always growing interests of glitch, the appointments to the Board the railway interests on the other.” had been made “by Order in Council and gazetted before the date of the coming Moments later, however, he added, “We into force of the Act which established are without a staff and [...] As far back as 1896, he had seen the necessity of establishing a permanent At the dawn of the 20th century, shiploads and independent regula- of immigrants were pouring tory body to ensure that into the country’s ports, and the public interest was The powers and the railways, with their huge served in the race to jurisdiction conferred land grants, were largely expand Canada’s railways.2 upon this [...] The Calgary Herald noted “the great advantage of having a permanent The Board found that although the Board of experts on the job.” A large higher freight rates in Western Canada photograph of the handsome Chairman might be discriminatory, they were Drayton was carried on the front page, justified by the greater competition with a caption that explained, “This is that the railways faced in the Eas [...] In 1922, the government appointed a special committee to study the Crowsnest An appeal to the Supreme Court by the Pass Agreement of 1897, in which the Western provinces resulted in a ruling in CPR had agreed to certain rate reduc- 1925 that the Board couldn’t drop the tions.