Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank you for inviting the Conference Board to appear before you today. I represent the institution as its vice-president for public policy.
The Conference Board is the largest independent research organization in Canada by number of employees and revenue. We are non-partisan, and we conduct fact-based analysis. We are largely known for our economic analyses.
I am here in connection with a study that the Conference Board prepared in 2013. I have examined that study once again in detail and a large part of what we did in 2013 is still relevant today. I also presented it to the task force earlier this year. The work the task force has done is, on the whole, consistent with what we did in 2013.
I will answer your questions in a few minutes, but I would simply like to say that the reason we undertook the study is that, after 16 years of budget surpluses, Canada Post felt it was under financial pressure and had to rectify the situation. The pressure is still there. Structural elements are in place, and there is a broader context. What is difficult with Canada Post, where the major questions and business models are starting to be shaken up by innovation, is to determine how to adapt and to assess the impact of the various measures possible. That would enable Canada Post to be profitable over the long term, while providing the services that Canadians expect.
Our job has been to put the various possible solutions into perspective. As part of the work done by the task force, particularly by Ernst & Young, an exercise similar to the one the Conference Board undertook in 2013 was conducted to measure the financial impact of community mailboxes, the conversion of Canada Post offices to franchises, and so on. We therefore have a series of six scenarios that involve, for example, the issue of salaries and alternate date mail delivery. In short, we are putting the potential impact of these various measures into perspective. It is an effort and an empirical and objective contribution to putting the potential of the various solutions that may be considered into perspective.
Progress and changes have been made in the past three years. I noticed that the dominant trends were already in place in the e-commerce field and in the decline in transactional mail. The Canada Post pension plan, which weighs quite heavily on the corporation's operations, is also adding pressure. These trends have accelerated in some areas, such as parcels, for example. That is the positive side of all this. In fact, there has been growth in that business sector, which has expanded more quickly than anticipated.
Internationally, we can observe trends and innovation, but we have not touched on them in our work. If there is still time and it is still possible, I would encourage the task force to explore avenues that are not necessarily those that we our observing and currently considering. There are all kinds of avenues in innovation.
The Conference Board is working on the issue of self-driving vehicles, for example. There is an ongoing debate in Canada on mail delivery using self-driving technologies on sidewalks, but these are things I have not heard talked about. There are also Canada Post's electronic services. In certain countries such as Finland, we are seeing many innovations in electronic services that are being combined with home mail delivery. These are options that I do not think have been discussed, and their potential should also be assessed.
I will stop there for the moment.
Thank you.