About me
Educated in England and Canada, Malcolm earned a PhD at the University of Toronto in mathematical statistics in 1975. He worked for nearly twenty years with the federal government in a variety of positions and departments, including Statistics Canada, the Canadian Transport Commission, the Office of Privatization and Regulatory Affairs, the Grain Transportation Agency and Transport Canada.
He joined Canadian Pacific Railway in 1994 as director of business research where he was involved in the analysis of a range of longer-term strategic issues. Over a period of years, he was involved with the 2000 review of the Canada Transportation Act – and specifically the issue of regulated rail access – with competition issues associated with railway mergers, competition among west coast ports for Asian container traffic, potential market and railway developments in Mexico, and the Canadian review of rail freight service. Latterly he was involved with positive train control in the US, and the potential impacts of the re-regulation of rail in the US.
Malcolm retired from Canadian Pacific in 2011 and now consults under the business name "Malcolm Cairns Research and Consulting". He has published on regulated access to railway infrastructure in North America, the movement of crude oil by Canadian railways, and written policy papers for the Canadian Transportation Research Forum (CTRF) on Rail Safety, Prospects for Hydrogen as a Transport Fuel, The Development of Passenger Rail in Canada, and the Merger of CP and KCS. Malcolm is past president of the CTRF, and the Ottawa Chapter of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transportation, and a former member of the Advisory Board of the North American Center for Trans-border Studies at Arizona State University.
