I represent the east Calgary communities of Ward 9. It is the home to a lot of the rail infrastructure and also home to CP Rail's world headquarters. I'm also one of the longest-standing members of council, now four terms in, elected alongside Mayor Nenshi in 2010. I've spent the last 11 years of my life developing a more robust relationship with CP Rail than the city has ever enjoyed. I would suggest that relationship is really like diplomacy, because they are effectively another government altogether that we have absolutely no control over and no tangible means for interaction with. I think there is a historic legacy of the thinking that we are operating mutually conflicting projects, with our building a city and their running a railroad. It's been 11 years of advances and setbacks, but I can say that we have a better working relationship with them now than we have had in decades, and that's due to actor-to-actor relationships rather than to any systemic framework that would really help to build the kinds of relationships that we need between our railroads and our municipalities.
That's a very key thing that needs to be addressed if we are going to accept the proposition that I put before you that the railroad is critical to our long-term success in a low-carbon future. When the railroad was established, the idea that the majority of Canadians would be living in big cities and towns was impossible to consider, but that's now exactly where the majority of Canadians live, and they need to have a much better working relationship with the railroad than we currently have. It can't be based on the suburban model of segregation. It has to be based on the thoughtful, mutual integration of this critical, continentally scaled transportation infrastructure with a whole suite of mobility choices.
I would encourage anything the federal government can do—as you think about rail safety and about the relationship to the kind of future we need to have—to consider and explore what kind of framework can be built for better relationships, because it cannot rely on actor-to-actor relationships.