Bill C-44 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act

This enactment amends the Canada Post Corporation Act to modify the exclusive privilege of the Canada Post Corporation so as to permit letter exporters to collect letters in Canada for transmittal and delivery outside Canada.

Canada Post Corporation Act

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have many concerns with the bill. There are many issues that need further consideration.

Why has the government not acted sooner? It has certainly had ample time to help resolve this issue. It had favourable support from all critics on all sides of the House. It sought accommodation with stakeholders. Why has the government waited so long? Why has it waited until today?

The Supreme Court decision came a number of years ago, in 2004. The strategic review was last December. Why has the government waited so long to take advantage of the goodwill in the House among our colleagues to seek a favourable resolution on this vital issue that affects all Canadians? It could lead to the deregulation of industries. It could lead to privatization. As we know, it certainly will lead to increased costs and a compromise of service in remote and rural communities, communities that a Liberal government is committed to serving.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, much has been said this morning about the exclusive privilege that we are trying to protect for the Canada Post Corporation. The member has given some eloquent comments about the concerns with respect to the bill.

It seems to me, though, what is most important is the link between that exclusive privilege and the protection of decent paying jobs in our communities.

The member, when asked by the Minister of State if she would vote for or against the bill. said that the Liberals would support it for now and see if they could improve it, but in the end she had no idea what the final position would be, which under most circumstances is fair enough. We often try to improve bills in the House. However, how do we improve on deregulation when we know it inevitably leads to privatization? We cannot suggest that if we improve the bill, it will make things better. We will have good deregulation as opposed to bad privatization.

It seems the member is trying to have it both ways. It is a bit like being a little bit pregnant, frankly.

I will follow up on the question asked earlier by the Minister of State. Could we get a categorical yes or no? Is the member in favour of deregulating Canada Post? Is she aware that it will lead to privatization? Does the member support that agenda?

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been unequivocal that we do not support deregulation or privatization of any variety.

What the government is attempting to do is open up a lucrative market, while at the same time undermining another one. This is what the legislation will witness, the deregulation of a natural monopoly, an erosion of service, an increase in costs and an increase in job losses.

Our crown corporations are mandated through a public policy agenda to provide service in remote and rural areas that would otherwise be unaffordable and too costly for the private sector to deliver. That is why Canada Post is a monopoly. We support it and we do not support deregulation or privatization.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has outlined how important Canada Post is, not only to urbanites but to rural communities and how the previous Liberal government had protected it.

Canada Post is competitive. It provides excellent service. It covers coast to coast to coast. Why is the government introducing a bad bill, which is on a slippery slope to privatization of Canada Post? What is the government's ideological agenda?

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is quite obvious what the government is doing. It is opening the door to deregulation of industries, our crown corporations and our crown jewels and will inevitably lead to spinoffs, sell-offs and privatization.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville said that she had been well briefed, had studied the bill and had a thorough understanding of it. What is strange is how she has missed a very important recommendation of the advisory panel, which says that the advisory panel recommends neither a general deregulation of the postal market, nor a reduction of the existing level of Canada Post's exclusive privilege, save for one segment, which is the remailing sector.

This has nothing to do with reduced postal service to rural Canada or to the rest of Canada. This is only to correct a part of the legislation that, if not corrected, will put many remailing companies out of business and hundreds and thousands of people out of work.

The member is starting to sound like NDP members, who sit up all night trying to dream up bad news scenarios to talk about in the House. It is not factual. The member should get her facts straight.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am completely aware of the recommendations of the report are and I am very aware that the legislation will lead to deregulation and possibly privatization.

We have lost confidence in the government. We have lost the trust and faith in the government. It is a government that said it would not raise taxes. What has it done? It is about to impose a $13 billion payroll tax on small businesses, businesses that we need to help rebuild the economy and our nation.

It said that it would run a surplus. What has it done? It announced a $34 billion deficit, which grew to a $50 billion deficit and today is a $56 billion deficit. We cannot count on a government that cannot count.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak on behalf of the Bloc Québécois today about Bill C-44, An Act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act.

I would like to begin by saying that the Bloc Québécois will vote against Bill C-44. This bill is the same as Bill C-14, which was introduced in May 2008. This bill would amend the Canada Post Corporation Act, abolishing Canada Post's exclusive privilege to handle outgoing international mail.

We think that taking away Canada Post's “exclusive privilege” would jeopardize its revenues and have other negative repercussions, such as the reorganization of rural mail delivery and job losses.

As a first step toward deregulating outgoing international mail, the introduction of Bill C-44 erases any doubt about the Conservative government's intention to completely privatize Canada Post.

The Bloc Québécois strongly opposes the privatization of Canada Post to any degree. The crown corporation must remain a public concern in order to maintain universal services and consistent rates throughout Canada and Quebec.

We should take a look at how the situation has evolved. On April 14, 1981, the House of Commons passed the Canada Post Corporation Act to turn the postal service from a department into a crown corporation. For the government of the day, a complete overhaul of the Canadian postal administration had become necessary because of the steady deterioration in the quality of service during the decades preceding the legislation. Serious disputes between the department and its employees, which led to a number of strikes that brought postal service to a standstill, were among the factors that contributed to the decline in the quality of service.

In a context that favoured the organization of public service workers in the 1970s, the postal workers' union waged an intense struggle for better working conditions in an environment that was being transformed by the mechanization and automation of mail processing. Administration of the department was made more complex by factors such as worker demands, a serious annual deficit that climbed to $600 million in 1981, and an increasingly competitive market.

The federal government’s top priority was to give the new postal administration the autonomy required to develop business objectives that would make postal services self sufficient in Canada, and also improve labour relations and service. The new crown corporation was given the “exclusive privilege” of collecting and delivering letters in Canada. The monopoly provides it with a guaranteed source of revenue that allows it to deliver mail to everyone, no matter where they live in a country, at affordable rates. In other words, it allows Canada Post to use the money it makes in high-density areas to provide service in non-profitable low-density areas. This practice is known as cross-subsidization. That is important.

In addition, among the changes that made it possible to achieve these new business objectives were the franchising of postal outlets, the privatization of other services, rate increases, the closure of post offices, especially in rural areas, technology development and use, and the penetration of new markets such as the acquisition of Purolator in 1993. As a result, in 1989 Canada Post made its first profit since 1957.

Today, Canada Post collects, processes and delivers over 11 billion pieces of mail a year throughout Canada, and between Canada and more than 200 postal administrations around the world. It serves approximately 14 million urban and rural addresses in Canada. Canada Post's products and services are sold through a network of some 23,000 retail outlets. It counts itself among the largest corporations in Canada in terms of gross revenue and is the sixth largest employer in Canada.

Canada Post Corporation, which is responsible for traditional postal operations, is the principal component of the Canada Post Group, which also includes Purolator Courier Ltd., epost, Innovapost, Progistix Solutions Inc. and Intelcom Courrier Canada Inc.

The Canada Post Corporation, which handles traditional postal activities, is the main component of the Canada Post Group, as I said earlier. In addition, the Canada Post Group remains profitable today, although its consolidated net profit after tax was $90 million for the year ending December 31, 2008. I would remind the House that the Canada Post Corporation has been subject to federal income tax since 1994. It also pays provincial tax and large corporation tax.

In addition to paying tax to its shareholder, the Canada Post Corporation pays it a dividend. Based on its financial performance in the previous year, Canada Post declared and paid $80 million in dividends to the Government of Canada in 2006. In 2007, it paid $48 million in dividends, and in 2008, $22 million. We can see that, with time, Canada Post is becoming less profitable and paying out less in dividends to the government.

What remailers do is collect bulk mail from business customers in one country and send it to another country with lower postal rates, where the mail is sorted and then remailed to a third country.

For example, a Canadian company that wants to send mail to the United Kingdom can deal with a remailer. The company sends the bulk mail to a post office in another country, where it will be sorted for a fraction of the price, then remailed to the United Kingdom.

Remailers have been working in Canada for over 20 years. In 2006, it was estimated that there were between 5 and 7 remailers in the country. The largest are Spring Global Mail, Key Mail and DHL Global Mail. They use the services of some Canadian industries and do $150 million in business.

It is important to understand the dispute between the Canada Post Corporation and remailers. Canada Post states the following:

For the last 10 to 15 years, several companies, some of which are surrogates of postal administrations abroad, have been collecting lettermail in Canada and bringing it to other countries where it is processed and remailed to other countries. Under section 14 of the Canada Post Corporation Act, Canada Post has the exclusive privilege of collecting, transmitting and delivering letters in Canada.

Canada Post initiated court action against several of these remailers. Through actions and appeals the matter was put before several courts. In all instances, the courts confirmed Canada Post’s interpretation of the Act.

For several years, Canada Post tried to resolve this issue diplomatically via the Universal Postal Union, of which most postal administrations are members, as well as through direct negotiations with violating remailers. When this did not effect compliance with the law, Canada Post reluctantly resorted to litigation.

I emphasize the word “reluctantly” because it is important. The Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, on which I sit, brought in Canada Post and the remailers. The first recommendation in our first report indicated that we wanted the jobs in these companies to be retained. That was the goal. It is important since Canada Post told us in its statement that it tried several times, through the Universal Postal Union, to negotiate with these companies.

It is important because in his speech on October 7, 2009, in the House, the Minister of State responsible for Canada Post, among other things, said:

There are two kinds of outboard international remails. [...] First, a piece of mail going to another country can go to a country with a lower regime cost.

...that is one way that it can and would be allowed. This actually goes back to the ratification of the 1999 Beijing congress on the Universal Postal Union. That is one way that it can be done.

There are two methods and one of the methods is legal and that is what everyone has always focused on. When we talk about $150 million worth of business in 2006, that figure has surely gone up since then. It was difficult for us to get the exact figures. When Canada Post says it is losing between $60 million and $80 million, that means that the remailers are still in business.

With that in mind, the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, responsible for examining crown corporations, looked at this issue. Our recommendation pointed out that since one way of operating is allowed by law, there is no need to change the law to allow these businesses to continue remailing under international agreements. Canada Post used the international platform and went to arbitration through the Universal Postal Union.

The Conservatives have not understood one thing: private corporations have a bad habit of not being all about service. They are there above all to make money. In recent years, they have launched huge operations with major public institutions such as universities and Quebec CEGEPs, by signing contracts with these universities. They were in the process of taking over Canada Post's market piece by piece.

I understand the decision of the President and board of directors of Canada Post. At some point they decided that enough was enough. Under the law, they have the right to do certain things—I read to the House the text delivered on October 7 by the minister responsible—but there are other things that they do not have the right to do and they have been told to stop. When I met with these companies' lobbyists, I told them to stop always wanting to expand. They are targeting Canada Post revenues, leading to their decline. What does that mean? It means that the government is considering privatization. The president of Canada Post, Moya Green, was hired at the time by the Liberals. We cannot ignore the fact that the president's stated goal, which is now gaining increasing support from the Conservatives, was to make Canada Post attractive for privatization.

That is clearly the goal, despite what many departmental documents say. An election is on the horizon, and they do not want to scare people. It is clear when we see the work that was assigned by the former minister, the member for Pontiac. He wanted a report that would open a crack in the exclusive privilege. In fact, by attacking the exclusive privilege and allowing companies to collect mail and send it overseas, the Conservatives are now opening up that crack. This will probably permit companies to collect all the mail from a major organization and process it abroad—and maybe even send it back here. Once the exclusive privilege has been breached and a company can take mail to be processed abroad, that does not mean that no letters will come back. What will happen then? It will end up before the courts. Canada Post will come in second, and will be forced to prove that the mail that was collected was intended for us, and that will not be easy.

That is what the Conservatives want. They want to open a crack in the exclusive privilege. Canada Post's profits are dwindling, but what matters to us, to Bloc Québécois members, is that services must be maintained throughout Quebec at the same rate. That is our objective. We know that the hidden agenda of the Conservatives is to open things up to competition. Once again, they are making speeches and haranguing us to tell us to open up to competition.

Rural areas in Quebec will never be able to compete with urban areas. How far will the Conservatives' need for competition go? I think it will never end, no matter what they may tell us today.

They released their latest report because there was a threat of election. They decided to sweep some of their ideas under the rug to hide them. We are not fooled. We hear them, we are listening. I listen to the minister's colleagues in committee. We know that they want privatization.

We will always be there to prevent privatization, especially when Canada Post services are currently under attack.

The government's report even makes it possible for services to be provided in a different way once postmasters retire.

The government sees it like this: they can close post offices and provide services at postal outlets, which are often located in shops or convenience stores.

My colleague from Drummond went through a difficult situation this week. What are Canada Post and the Conservative government doing to obtain the public's consent? They offer more services to a community. The postmaster retires. They could replace him, but what they really want to do is contract the services out to a private outlet located in a shop that is open for longer hours than the post office.

However, what happened with my colleague from Drummond was that it came to light that a contract had been signed with a convenience store owner, and the contract was due to expire in 2010. Then Canada Post decided to impose new advertising standards. Lacking the means to do what the crown corporation wanted him to do, the operator could no longer provide the service. Canada Post therefore closed that outlet and opened another four or five kilometres away, and then some 5,000 people had to drive their cars to pick up their mail. That is what happened.

Clearly, Moya Greene, the corporation's president, will have achieved her objective. She wants to close service centres, because she thinks there are too many and they are too expensive. Of course people will have to travel to get their mail and that is what we will do. They are choosing to do something indirectly that they refuse to openly admit. The fact that the Conservatives are supporting Canada Post's actions just shows their hypocrisy.

Bill C-44 is therefore a way to create a crack in Canada Post's exclusive privilege of collecting the mail. There is a reason I gave a little background information, because that exclusive privilege was granted to Canada Post. Before becoming a crown corporation, with the government as its major shareholder, it reported directly to the government. Now it is a crown corporation. As I said earlier, it pays federal and provincial income tax, as well as corporate income tax. It has a board of directors and acts more or less autonomously. It would not take much to be able to privatize it.

Of course as long as it is generating income for the government, things are fine. However, the problem is that the Conservative government is beginning to realize that the way things are going, profits will continue to dwindle. So naturally, there is tremendous temptation. The temptation to privatize began with the Liberals and continues with the Conservatives. Of course, as soon as a private corporation takes over, it will be like what happened with Air Canada. Since Air Canada's privatization, no one can say that the service has remained the same throughout Canada as it was when it was the government's responsibility or when it was a crown corporation. They want us to forget that.

When it comes to service in French, we all know that Air Canada receives more complaints than any other. It is legally obliged to provide service in both official languages. Yet that company is the subject of the greatest number of complaints to the Commissioner of Official Languages, because it does not provide the service. That is a fact.

As soon as Canada Post is privatized, there will be fewer services in rural areas, and the Bloc Québécois will never be a party to this creeping privatization. What the government is doing is opening up a crack in Canada Post's exclusive privilege, and it will be the beginning of the end. The end, in our opinion, is the privatization of the corporation, which is clearly not acceptable. As soon as it is privatized, service in rural areas will not be as good as in urban areas. Who knows, one day there could well be two sets of postal rates: lower rates for urban areas and higher rates for rural areas. We have to nip this in the bud.

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Minister of State (Transport)]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is suggesting that the privatization is sort of the thin edge of the wedge.

If that is indeed what he thinks, then why are the Liberals, the Bloc and the NDP not pushing us hard to bring in a charter?

That was an initiative brought in by this government. The charter locks in stone that that will never happen. The idea of Canada Post going into privatization is absolutely absurd. It has a universal, effective, efficient system. It actually has the number one brand name in Canada, ahead of Tim Hortons, ahead of Canadian Tire, as deemed last year. It is a great corporation, and it is going to stay that way.

This bill does not do any of what is being suggested by the opposition. It takes absolutely nothing away from Canada Post. All it does is allow for competition on outbound, international mail. That is all it does. It does not compromise one little bit any mail that is delivered in Canada.

We have to understand that this is a very small tweaking of a piece of legislation, the Canada Post Corporation Act. It is not going to lead to anything other than a more efficient, effective operation in Canada, as well as to making sure that we retain jobs for the international remailers. It will mean more jobs in Canada, more money in Canada, and a greater ability to compete as a nation.

Why is the Bloc not pushing us to put in a charter that locks in stone the very things the member is suggesting we would try to attempt to privatize or to move Canada Post into being?

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would just ask the minister to look at the history of Canada Post. That is why I gave some background earlier, because Canada Post was given the exclusive privilege so that it could be profitable. That was the goal. He says that this is a little bill, and it is true, but it is probably the most damaging little bill. It says this:

Section 15 of the Canada Post Corporation Act is amended by adding the following after subsection (2):

(3) The exclusive privilege referred to in subsection 14(1) does not apply to letters intended for delivery to an addressee outside Canada.

I have said and I will say again that this is the beginning of the end of Canada Post's exclusive privilege. That is what the Conservatives want. I gave him the example, because now remailers will be able to send lettermail abroad. How do we know they will not collect all an institution's mail, even mail that could end up back here in Canada? It will be up to Canada Post to prove that this mail was sent from Canada and wound up back here.

That is the hypocritical Conservative way of achieving their ends without saying so out loud. The minister knows it full well. The companies know it full well because, in committee, Canada Post was asked not to go further or the companies would want to take over the entire market. Obviously the remailers do not hesitate to keep going. They want even more of the market.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, allowing outbound mail is the first step on the slippery slope to deregulation. The government said that it would preserve the integrity of our crown corporations. Here it is attempting to dismantle and deregulate them, perhaps even privatize these crown jewels.

The government also said it would create jobs. It said it would create 200,000 jobs. Instead, it has lost 500,000 jobs. I want to ask my hon. colleague his opinion, because I believe there are more than 55,000 jobs at stake here. Are there jobs to be gained or jobs to be lost with this legislation?

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her question.

Jobs are at stake with the structural cuts and the way Ms. Green operates. However, attacking Canada Post's exclusive privileges will take business away from it. And if business is taken away, there will be less income, fewer jobs and fewer services. That is the problem I have in all this.

My problem is rural service. I represent a rural riding and I want to be sure that Canada Post's service will still be available nearby, as it always has been, and that it will cost the same from one end of Quebec to another and from one end of Canada to another. That is what the Bloc Québécois members want. We rise every day to defend the interests of Quebeckers and opposing this bill is one way of doing so.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member will have five minutes for questions and comments after question period.

The House resumed from October 9 consideration of the motion that Bill C-44, An Act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to debate the government's attempt at privatizing Canada Post part two. Part one was Bill C-14, which was introduced about two years ago, and to refresh people's memories, it was not that long a bill. Neither is Bill C-44, the one now before us now. They are exactly the same bills. It is important to state, as my comments will show, that they are exactly the same bills with different numbers and dates on it. The sole purpose is to privatize part of Canada Post.

Interestingly, however, we hear government members stand and say that they do not agree with privatization. It is in their famed report, the strategic review that says that they do not agree with privatization. In this case, however, all they need is a little deregulation and they automatically get privatization because it is already there. Talk about a major flip-flop.

The government began its tenure in government supporting the fact that all mail delivered within Canada is the responsibility of Canada Post and any mail delivered anywhere is the responsibility of Canada Post. However, as I will show, the government flip-flopped and I am not sure where the Liberals are. I will mention them a couple of times but they are, as a Liberal colleague said, skating on this one and the skate is set to music in this case.

I wanted to mention the strategic plan early on because the Conservatives did a strategic review of the Canada Post Corporation. There may be some members of the government who are tempted to say that they are going for this because of the recommendation in here. We need to understand that the first bill, Bill C-14, was introduced before this report was done. Who is really surprised that a government hand-picked committee came up with a report that, get ready for the shock, endorsed the government's position? Wow, who would have thought that a group of people selected by the government would recommend a major change in the way Canada Post operates and it just happens to line up beautifully with where the government is? It is a wondrous world. I will come back to that report.

I want to begin with the Canada Post Corporation Act, one small part of this law. Part 1, Objects, section 5.(1)(b) reads as follows:

the need to conduct its operations on a self-sustaining financial basis while providing a standard of service that will meet the needs of the people of Canada and that is similar with respect to communities of the same size;

The operative language is “on a self-sustaining financial basis”. If we were not there, there might be some kind of argument that the government could make that it should make this change. If we were on a trend line that showed that in the near future Canadians would need to start either increasing the cost of postage or, worse yet, giving direct subsidies to keep it afloat.

What is the reality, one might ask, so we know the context. The reality right now is that Canada Post makes a small profit so it is currently meeting the mandate of a self-sustaining basis. It sounds like it is meeting its mandate. Why would we make this change? Will the change do any harm to the ability of Canada Post to meet its mandate of being self-sustaining financially?

Let us go back to the last review. We have the government and its current review which says that we ought to stop giving Canada Post the exclusive privilege of dealing with all mail.

What the last report in 1996 said about this very idea, the whole purpose of this bill that we are dealing with right now, about that singular idea that is the singular purpose of Bill C-44, is:

Removal of the exclusive privilege would be tantamount, in effect, to tossing Canada's postal system up into the air, allowing it to smash into a random assortment of pieces, and hoping that those pieces would somehow re-arrange themselves into a coherent whole that was better or at least as good as the current system.

What has changed since 1996? I know. The government, and the official opposition which used to be the government so they might not want to laugh too hard yet until we get to the bottom line. There will be time for them, so they should not get too upset.

In 1996, there was no mistake, the government of the day did support keeping Canada Post intact. Another review came up with that conclusion. Is that the only conclusion? No. This is so critical; there is lots of evidence. I wish I had much more than 20 minutes to get it all on the floor of the House of Commons about why we ought not do this and what the experts, the people with the experience, have had to say about this idea over the years. However, I will do my best to get the main pieces tabled.

What did Canada Post say at that time? It is a little quieter these days. It does not say as much, certainly not as much in support of the Canada Post that most Canadians want. At the time, Canada Post said:

For as long as it is the public policy of Canada to provide universal letter service at uniform rates, it will be necessary to maintain the limited exclusive privilege for letters.

This bill undoes that.

Now who else might have something to say about this? Well, cabinet ministers who are responsible for Canada Post often have things to say. What did the Conservative cabinet minister responsible for Canada Post say in a letter dated July 25, 2006? He said:

The activities of international remailers cost Canada Post millions of dollars each year and erodes the Corporation's ability to maintain a healthy national postal service and provide universal service to all Canadians.

That was a Conservative minister of the Conservative government on record, in writing.

I will introduce one more piece to the foundation of our position on this. The situation is that these private enterprises started encroaching into this business and then started getting into it in a big way. Canada Post told them to stop but they did not. it tried a negotiation process but that did not work. So, given the mandate that it has under law, it did what any Canadian or any Canadian corporation would do if somebody was wronging them, it took them to court. Canada Post won.

However, because these international remailers are so committed to the Canadian postal service, they appealed that decision. On May 8, 2007, the Ontario Court of Appeals brought down its ruling. Justice McFarland wrote on behalf of the three judge panel who had a unanimous decision. They said:

The purpose of the statutory privilege can only be to enable CP to fulfill its statutory mandate or realize its objects. It is meant to be self-sustaining financially while at the same time providing similar standards of service throughout our vast country. Profits are realized in densely populated areas which subsidize the services provided in the more sparsely populated areas.

Is it that hard to understand? We have a huge, beautiful country but it does present serious challenges in terms of presenting and providing the same level of service in downtown Toronto as in downtown Hamilton, Vancouver, Halifax, Yellowknife and, quite frankly, all the other far flung reaches of this country. It is expensive and has challenges in addition to money in terms of having the human resources.

We have this great formula in Canada right now whereby there is enough money being made to tell Canada Post to do it all but that we will regulate it, that it will be responsible to Parliament through a minister, that we will provide the law and regulations, but that its purpose is to provide this service at a world level and be self-sustaining.

Nobody likes an increase in the price of postage stamps or anything like that, but the fact is that currently Canada has one of the lowest cost postal services in the world. That would be one kind of a brag if we are talking about Austria, but to make that brag when we talk about Canada is pretty darn good and it has been pretty good.

There are always problems. I am sure that is not a person in this room who does not have one postal or letter story or another, so be it, but in a large corporation that size that is not surprising. The reality for most people is that the service is okay. It can always be better but it is not horribly broken and inefficient. It is quite the contrary. It is efficient enough to generate a little profit.

What is on the floor now would have the effect of taking that ability away. Why is the government doing it? It did not have that position before and now it has it right after the judge's decision.

This is what it looks like. It looks like a group of entrepreneurs, and there is nothing wrong with that, got into this business, struggled with Canada Post, lost the struggle, went to court, lost, appealed it, lost and then found friends in the Conservative government and said, “We cannot seem to get our argument past the courts with that darn monopoly that Canada Post has that lets it generate this modest profit, so what we would like is for you to change the law and then we will not be violating the law. We can keep on doing what we are doing and whatever happens to Canada Post, that is your problem”.

It is similar to a lot of the issues at the core of privatization. They cherry-pick the things that make the most money, privatize that and make bags of money, usually with non-union workers, but it is a free country but that is a little point to make, and leave the expensive parts, like delivering mail to Yellowknife or Iqaluit, to the government, which will be the first one to talk about how much it costs and how outrageously inefficient the system is.

We have a system that is not perfect but the financial structure allows us to maintain and expand our service to pay the workers a decent wage and benefits. It is not as good as what they deserve for the work they do but it is a decent wage and benefits. All that is done and Canadians do not need to give it a thought. It is taken care of because of the way it is structured.

In effect, by deregulating this particular section, by taking it out of the existing law, the government would make legal the privatization of Canada Post work that is prohibited under the current law. One little change and suddenly what is not allowed in the front door comes merrily bouncing through the back door. That is what is going on.

The government is going to stand and talk about jobs and this, that and the other thing, and the reality is the question is not whether there will be jobs. The question is whether those jobs are going to be outside Canada Post and therefore deny Canada Post the financial ability to provide the service and to be financially self-sustaining, as the law mandates and as it has been doing. That is the real rub.

If this thing were broken and nothing were working and Canada Post were running a massive deficit, one could make arguments for some kind of fix and correction. However, that is not the case.

The people who will be celebrating, should this bill pass, are the owners of the companies doing the re-mailing. That is why I mention the official opposition because I do not know where the Liberals are. They supported Bill C-14, which was the exact same bill, word for word. The current critic is listening to the member for Toronto Centre and skating up and getting ready to go. What I heard was that they put out some nonsense that they were going to support it at this hearing so they could get it to committee and then at committee, they would worry about the jobs that should be at Canada Post and about where the money was going to come from. It is all just a scam.

The fact of the matter is this is a straight-up question. My colleague from the Bloc spoke in the last go-round and made it very clear that there is no nuancing here; there are no maybes or ifs or any kind of dodging. It is very simple: we either support the right of Canada Post to maintain the exclusive privilege and therefore to have the ability to be financially viable, or we do not.

I say to the official opposition, if they join with us and the Bloc, we could kill this. We could save Canada Post. There are a lot of people who use Canada Post and who work for Canada Post and are beneficiaries of the services of Canada Post who do not want this to happen. They do not want it to happen for the very practical reason that it does not make sense. It only makes sense if we think about the owners of these corporations that are doing the re-mailing, the mailing outside Canada, mostly to the United States, right next door. That is where the money is. That is where the volume is. That is where the big bucks are. Of course they want this.

They are going to talk to us about the jobs. Move those jobs out of where they are now and put them in Canada Post and I will bet that every one of those employees will be making more money than he or she is today, and Canada Post would still turn a modest profit. There is a win-win-win situation.

However, the owners of the companies that are currently illegally doing this work would be so heartbroken to see this die. It is the best Christmas present they could ever get, and they would have received it because of the handiwork of the Conservatives and, until I hear differently, from the support of the Liberals, who will have changed their position from having supported Canada Post the way it was to supporting this nonsense.

We can stop all of that. Do Canada Post, Canadians and Canadian business a big favour by voting this bill down and out.