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What, you may ask, is the most ridiculous thing about The Canadian? Some might point to the astonishing level of subsidy: In 2018, the average corridor passenger enjoyed a subsidy of $32, or 17 cents per mile. The average passenger on The Canadian: $596, or 48 cents a mile, for a total of $49 million.

The Canadian has been shut down almost since the blockade began, and hardly anyone has noticed

But never mind the price for a second; look what it’s buying. Fifty years ago, CN’s Super Continental was scheduled to take 67 hours. Today The Canadian, plying the same route and giving way to every freight train, is budgeted a mind-boggling 85 hours eastbound and 97 westbound.

VIA padded out the timetable in 2018 hoping to make the trip more “predictable,” after impudent passengers started complaining about being taken hostage for hours or days, thus ruining their onward travel plans. In 2017’s peak summer season, more than half of eastbound arrivals were at least eight hours late. The average westbound delay between November 2017 and March 2018 was 19 hours; the maximum was 43 hours!

This yielded some very unkind reviews on Tripadvisor: “worst Christmas experience ever” might be the most poignant. But of course, the only people who would even book such a journey have a lot of time on their hands — time, and money.

For all the subsidies, The Canadian is eye-wateringly expensive. For the full one-way trip, a cabin for two will set you back $3,824, meals included. You can take a five-day mid-range Caribbean cruise for that, and that’s no coincidence: The Canadian is essentially a cruise ship on rails. It’s just that, well, Canadian taxpayers don’t subsidize cruise lines. Because that would be nuts.