It's approx. 45 minutes by train between the two cities, which are actually quite different. Lausanne is a university town whereas Geneva is an international city with multi-national corporations and political world bodies located there.

Geneva is extremely expensive, even by Swiss standards. The exchange rate vis-a-vis the Canadian currency is better now than it used to be but I don't know about their inflation rate compared to ours.

Switzerland is not in the European Monetary Union so prices will be quoted in CHF. You'll get about 10% more in CHF for each CAD.

Here's the SBB web site for researching timetables: http://fahrplan.sbb.ch/bin/query.exe/en

Here's the official Switzerland home page: http://caen.myswitzerland.com/en/welcome.cfm

Hope that helps, Linda