We have 600 years of peat in the Canuck bogs alone. Let alone the oil sands and so on and so on.

The real point here is.... rail vs road. There is a lot of oil to fuel the road.... hmmm... can we ponder?

What about the real "vs"? Say you were a prospector, a mining engineer, and knew how to extract oil from the earth. Better than them there rail guys. Why, you could build small automobiles and sell them to the general public and fuel them. And, you could use the heavy bitumen to bind sand and gravel and build flat roads for these vehicles. And, all the while, get government subsidies to do so, if you paid the government officials off. And bought them enough bullets for them to, oh, say, keep world peace.... whatever.

Or... do the rail barons know that their market is in heavy land transit of bulk goods which can never be touched by the spinoff of truck transport, thereby ensuring their hold of all of the natural resources?

I am just askin, eh?