Canadians and their Hunter Harrison thing

I’ve been called to account for my column in the April issue of Trains Magazine that argues Hunter Harrison would make a better chief executive officer of Canadian Pacific than the incumbent, Fred Green. The arguments against my opinion piece are of three sorts, and deserve a closer look. I should add that they come from Canadians, about which more in a moment.

One line of attack against Harrison, the president of CP rival Canadian National until his retirement at the end of 2009, is that he achieved his industry-best operating ratio (the percentage of operating revenues eaten up by operating expenses) by the blood of Canadian railroaders that was shed. I am not kidding you. One correspondent to Trains said exactly this, arguing from his heart rather than his head.

I had to remind this fellow that in the last five years of Hunter Harrison’s reign at CN, the accident rate per million train miles was below the average for Class I railroads each and every year. And Harrison in his tenure named a VP to be CN’s chief safety officer. These facts do not bespeak someone uncaring about the issue of safe railroading.

In a similar vein, another person said Harrison “broke” the U.S. unions to achieve his goals. That is so absurd it made me laugh. U.S. and Canadian operating unions reflect their memberships. The U.S. operating employees of CN became perhaps the highest paid railroaders in the world by agreeing to be paid hourly rather than by the mile. But the agreement requires a 10-hour day, the crew switching at its terminal to fill out the time. Canadian operating employees want nothing of this, preferring the possibility of shorter work days to higher pay. The point I want to make is that nobody forced the U.S. employees to make this change; they voted for it.

The next criticism of the man is oblique: Harrison created a “climate” of fear or harassment or carelessness or fill-in-the-blank that led to unsafe conditions. This is a really dumb road to wander down. Using this criteria, I can blame Matt Rose and Carl Ice of BNSF Railway every time a wheel goes off the rail on that railroad or a conductor sprains a back throwing a switch. Short of finding the smoking gun, does anybody really want to argue in favor of this line of thought? It justifies blaming anyone for anything.

But the third line of attack against Harrison is the most interesting, and one that I invite your involvement to sort out. At its core, this argument is that he is not Canadian. Several correspondents (all Canadians, I repeat) have said as much in their emails to me.

Okay, so how to frame this issue? I travel to Canada many times a year. I love Canada, and I appreciate Canadians. Americans and Canadians, I notice, really are different. We Yanks are aggressive, in your face. We argue with cops as they write speeding citations, and we lean on our horns when the driver in front of us doesn’t step forward smartly when the light turns green. And boy, do we argue politics. Canadians are more reserved and non-aggressive. You see this driving in Canadian cities. You see this when they argue (or rather, don't argue) politics. They seek consensus. They obey speed limits and defer to other motorists. Delays or inattention that would cause me to hit the horn are forgiven by Canadian motorists. Frankly, I would like to be more like them.