Mr. Chair, those are two areas we do want to make sure we shed some light on.
With respect to grade crossings, we have a fund available to help with making changes at grade crossings, as I referred to in my remarks already. We also have a program to close grade crossings, either private or public, that are no longer needed. We contribute to that as well. There are about 5,000 of these in the country.
With respect to Operation Lifesaver, it is absolutely worth taking time to talk about a great group of people who work together to ensure that we are communicating with kids, with families, and with communities about the importance of safety around rail. In fact, last week was rail safety week, and Operation Lifesaver has done a great job tweeting out information to people to make sure they have rail safety at the forefront of their minds.
In March of this year, I was able to host a round table dealing specifically with the issues associated with higher density in certain urban areas and pedestrian fatalities as a result of accidents with rail. We brought together the main railways: GO Transit, VIA, CN, and CP. We also brought into the room a mom who lost her son. Those kinds of conversations are important in reminding ourselves that we should continuously talk about not just the transportation of dangerous goods but also the fact that we do have this interaction with pedestrians in communities and that we should continuously do all we can to ensure their safety.
As one last thing, this is also national occupational health and safety week, so it is an important time to think about those things as well.