Thanks, Mr. Maloney. That comes from our observations of proximity issues in my comment about jurisdiction. The safest crossing is a grade separation. That may be expensive, but municipalities say to developers that they want street lights, sewers, and water. Why shouldn't they be able to say they want them to provide money for a grade separation on the other side of the railway?
Our example in the report is from Wetaskiwin. We took a rail inspection car from Calgary to Edmonton. There's a whole lot of land in Alberta, and when you get to Wetaskiwin you see what's happened. You have the town on one side of the tracks and you have the subdivision and the school on the other. It's a recipe for disaster. I realize grade separations are expensive, but a municipality wanting development approves the subdivision on the other side, gets the sewers and water, and nobody says they should take all their roads and funnel them into one crossing where there's going to be a grade separation. They expect a contribution for that too. If they don't get it, the council down the road is the one that deals with the problems. I think there should be more emphasis on doing that when we have lots of land.
The counterpart in the city of Montreal was where I think a golf course owned by one of the railway companies has nine holes in one municipality and nine holes in the other. One is saying that nine holes are going to be residential development and the other is saying they don't want those nine holes developed. How do you solve these problems? How do we prevent the residential community being built, and then the next thing you know, at the first council meeting after people have lived there a while, they're complaining to council.
I think there has to be better cooperation between the municipalities and the federal government. I wouldn't give the railways the hammer--and I don't think you can do it constitutionality--but we asked for something like Ontario's buffer requirement. If there is a development within 300 metres of a railway line, there has to be notice to the railway, so it can apply to the various hearings, be a party to them, and put their point of view in front of the politicians who are going to make the final decision.