The excessive construction of railway lines in Canada led to significant financial difficulties striking many of them, in the years leading up to 1920: The Canadian National Railway Company then evolved through the following steps: GTR management and shareholders opposed to nationalization took legal action, but after several years of arbitration,[14] the GTR was finally absorbed into the CNR on January 30, 1923.

[23] In 1992, a new management team led by ex-federal government bureaucrats, Paul Tellier and Michael Sabia, started preparing CN for privatization by emphasizing increased productivity.

This was achieved largely through aggressive cuts to the company's management structure, widescale layoffs in its workforce and continued abandonment or sale of its branch lines.

The CN Commercialization Act[24] was enacted into law on July 13, 1995, and by November 28, 1995, the Government of Canada had completed an initial public offering (IPO) and transferred all of its shares to private investors.

Following the successful IPO, CN has recorded impressive gains in its stock price, largely through an aggressive network rationalization and purchase of newer more fuel-efficient locomotives.

This single purchase of IC transformed CN's entire corporate focus from being an east–west uniting presence within Canada (sometimes to the detriment of logical business models) into a north–south NAFTA railway (in reference to the North American Free Trade Agreement).

CN was then feeding Canadian raw material exports into the U.S. heartland and beyond to Mexico through a strategic alliance with Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS).

The merger announcement by CN's Paul Tellier and BNSF's Robert Krebs was greeted with skepticism by the U.S. government's Surface Transportation Board (STB), and protested by other major North American rail companies, namely CPR and Union Pacific Railroad (UP).

also denounced the proposed merger, following the confusion and poor service sustained in southeastern Texas in 1998 following UP's purchase of Southern Pacific Railroad two years earlier.

In response to the rail industry, shippers, and political pressure, the STB placed a 15-month moratorium on all rail-industry mergers, effectively scuttling CN-BNSF plans.

CN also announced in October 2003 an agreement to purchase Great Lakes Transportation (GLT), a holding company owned by Blackstone Group for US$380 million.

GLT was the owner of Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad, Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway (DM&I), and the Pittsburgh & Conneaut Dock Company.

The key instigator for the deal was the fact that since the Wisconsin Central purchase, CN was required to use DM&I trackage rights for a short 18 km (11 mi) "gap" near Duluth, Minnesota, on the route between Chicago and Winnipeg.

Also included in GLT's portfolio were eight Great Lakes vessels for transporting bulk commodities such as coal and iron ore as well as various port facilities.

On December 24, 2008, the STB approved CN's purchase for $300 million of the principal lines of the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway Company (EJ&E) (reporting mark EJE) from the U.S. Steel Corporation, originally announced on September 27, 2007.

The purchase of the lightly used EJ&E corridor was positioned by CN as a boon not only for its own business but for the efficiency of the entire U.S. rail system.

[25] In March 2021, CN subsidiary WCL reached a deal to sell roughly 1,400 km (900 mi) of non-core rail lines and assets in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ontario to short-line operator Watco.

The move by CN was influenced by the projected economic upturn once the world began to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, with KCS's railroad network reaching from Canada, through the United States, and running along the Panama Canal.

CN has frequently been touted in recent years within North American rail industry circles as being the most-improved railroad in terms of productivity and the lowering of its operating ratio, acknowledging the fact the company is becoming increasingly profitable.

[43] In September 2012, CN announced the trial of locomotives fuelled by natural gas as a potential alternative to conventional diesel fuel.

Claims of unfair competition from CP as well as pressure on the government to create a public broadcasting system similar to the British Broadcasting Corporation led the government of R. B. Bennett (who had been a corporate lawyer with Canadian Pacific as a client prior to entering politics) to pressure CNR into ending its on-train radio service in 1931 and then withdrawing from the radio business entirely in 1933.

Canadian railways built and operated their own resort hotels, ostensibly to provide rail passengers travelling long distances a place to sleep overnight.

In 1928–29 Cammell Laird built a set of five ships for CN[61] to carry mail, passengers and freight between eastern Canada and the Caribbean via Bermuda.

[67] In the Second World War Lady Somers was requisitioned as an ocean boarding vessel while her four sister ships continued in CN service.

The two surviving Lady Boats, Nelson and Rodney, were sold in 1952 after declining passenger traffic and rising labour costs made them too expensive to run.

The other board members are Donald J. Carty, V. Maureen Kempston Darkes, Gordon D. Giffin, Edith E. Holiday, Luc Jobin, Denis Losier, Kevin G. Lynch, James E. O'Connor, Robert L. Phillips, and Laura Stein.

From 1919 to 1995, CN was also the responsibility of the relevant federal cabinet minister as a Crown Corporation: Claude Mongeau was president and CEO from 2010 to 2016, previously serving as CFO for almost a decade.

After CN acquired BC Rail in 2004, it started operating a railbus service between Seton Portage and Lillooet, British Columbia called the Kaoham Shuttle.

Electrification was restricted to Montreal, and went from Central Station to Saint-Lambert (south), Turcot (west), Montréal-Nord (east) and Saint-Eustache-sur-le-lac, later renamed Deux-Montagnes, (north).

Later in 1995 the AMT's Electric Multiple Units began operating under 25 kV AC 60 Hz electrification, and in 2014, dual-power locomotives entered service on the Mascouche line.