Transport committee  As Daniel mentioned, under the grade crossings regulations there is a shared responsibility. Certainly the railways' view is that there is an obligation to have safe crossings. One of the problems we have is that there are very many crossings. Often they're private crossings. As

Transport committee  The only case in which you would have a pure railway company owning its crossing would be on its own property, in which case of course it would look after it. Generally speaking, as I mentioned—and obviously we recognize that there is a need to cross railway tracks—from a safet

Transport committee  We just renewed them in 2013, so the new versions of them predate the accident at Lac-Mégantic by just a couple of months.

Transport committee  As Daniel mentioned, some jurisdictions, such as Ontario, are making great progress. Montreal, which has a mayor who used to be a member of this committee, is obviously a little more enlightened than others. But we're making some progress. We'd love to see more municipalities ado

Transport committee  Meaningful consultation is always a good thing. But what we're suggesting is that currently there is a machinery-of-government change required. It's appropriate that during the review of the Canada Transportation Act this be noted. I would suggest that the Canadian Transportati

Transport committee  Well, if they're shutting the railway, then it does. If they're shutting the road part of the crossing, it doesn't impact us. Quite frankly, what we see as the safest crossing is a crossing that has been closed. We would like to see far fewer crossings in this country.

Transport committee  Those are the ones that are federally regulated. There are also a number that are provincially regulated, many undocumented. You actually can't get a fixed number for the total of crossings in this country, but it is tens of thousands.

Transport committee  Well, I don't want to leave the impression that good work isn't being done, because there is a lot of very good work being done. I mentioned the proximity guidelines we have developed with the FCM. We're working together with them to try to convince provinces and municipalities

Transport committee  It varies by community. I would echo the comments made by Madam Quinlan that I think the railways have very good relationships in communities. In fact, many short line railways are owned by communities, by provinces, so of course they talk to one another. The railway industry has

Transport committee  In our case, Ms. Bateman did contact us, but we never did have a chance to speak to her. She did contact us.

Transport committee  Let me try to answer the first part of your question first. This really is an all-of-society type of problem. We have grown as a country. We've grown for the most part in the southern part of the country. We've grown along the railway lines that we built to build the country. A

Transport committee  For our part, I don't disagree with what you've said. Our position is essentially that the act already provides that authority. If the government believes that this authority is not strong enough and they want to strengthen the language in the new act, which is going to supersede

Transport committee  The reason that in my remarks today I went beyond Bill C-627 is precisely because I think there are a number of proactive steps that legislators can take with respect to crossing safety. There are a number of very important changes that need to be made if we're going to improve c

Transport committee  Look, it's very hard to disagree with what you've just said. But in the context of my remarks, what I was suggesting is that, first of all, let's not forget that in stopping the flow of traffic on the railways, it's one thing to do that temporarily while you fix a problem. Railwa

Transport committee  Federally, there is a grade crossing improvement program. That money is available to municipalities and railways to apply for an improvement, which could be grade separation. There are two problems with the program. The biggest one is this problem, that I mentioned a moment ago,