Thank you, and I want to welcome the witnesses to the committee.
I was also a mayor at one point and served on the FCM board of directors--I sat on your green fund for five years--so I'm very familiar with the organization. I appreciate your being here.
I've got a number of questions. The railway companies have stated interest in this because they say large developments in municipalities will impact them in terms of...I think in a number of ways. Of course, there's the level crossing issue, but I'm very concerned now with the high rate of deaths through trespass. Many people will cross rail lines because they perhaps are going to a new housing development. Within the community there are reasons to cross the rail or to use the rail line when they shouldn't be.
We're dealing here with railway safety. Of the deaths that have occurred in our rail system in the last number of years, all of them have been through either level crossings or trespass. So when we come to deal with safety, we want to understand completely how to reduce those numbers. I'm sure you agree with me that this is the requirement we're working on here.
The railways have come to us and said they need to be able to understand the nature of municipal development so they can better offer planning advice in terms of access and crossings. Wouldn't you see that the work here would be important for your municipalities across the country to come to grips with this particular issue? I know that perhaps we don't want to have a federal law that lays out the requirements of municipalities, but how would you propose that we increase the safety of people within the municipality, reduce the number of deaths at level crossings, and do all that work here without some measure of understanding between railways and municipalities?