Thank you, Mr. Chairman, committee members. I'll be making my presentation in French.
On behalf of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee on Part 15 of Bill C-9. CUPW represents 54,000 workers in rural and urban communities from coast to coast to coast. A majority of our members work for Canada Post.
CUPW would like to urge this committee to give this very small part of Bill C-9 a very large amount of attention as it amounts to partial deregulation of our public post office. In Canada, letter mail is regulated for a reason. Canada Post has an exclusive privilege to handle letters so that it is able to generate enough money to provide affordable postal service to everyone, no matter where they live in our huge country. This privilege includes both domestic and international letters. We believe it will become increasingly difficult for Canada Post to provide universal postal service if the government erodes the very mechanism that funds this service—the exclusive privilege.
Canada Post’s exclusive privilege to handle letters has received remarkably little attention over the years. But international mailers, who are currently carrying international letters in violation of the law, have recently taken issue with this privilege and waged a campaign to undermine our post office’s right to handle international letters. Canada Post estimates that international mailers siphon off $60 million to $80 million per year in business. Its concerns with remailers have grown as the international mail business has grown and as remailers have unfairly competed for international mail by exploiting the two-tier terminal dues system adopted by the Universal Postal Union in 1999.
It is our understanding that Canada Post attempted to address its concerns with international mailers through negotiations and finally through legal action against two of the largest companies, Spring and Key Mail. One ruling by the Court of Appeal for Ontario stressed the importance of the exclusive privilege in serving rural and remote communities and noted that international mailers such as Spring Canada are not required to bear the high cost of providing services to the more remote regions of Canada. The corporation won this legal challenge all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
After this victory, a coalition of private Canadian and international mail companies called the Canadian International Mail Association (CIMA), hired a lobbyist in an attempt to convince parliamentarians to remove international letters from Canada Post’s exclusive privilege to handle letters. The government initially defended the importance of the exclusive privilege but it was not long before it started to reconsider its position, presumably because of the CIMA lobby. Nevertheless, the government did promise, in a letter to CUPW, that no changes to Canada Post's exclusive privilege would be considered without thorough policy analysis. We would like to point out that, to date, there has been no serious review or thorough policy analysis of the international mail issue or the impact of removing international letters from Canada Post’s exclusive privilege.
The government’s recent strategic review of Canada Post did not look at these issues. Unfortunately, this did not stop the review’s advisory panel from recommending against deregulation of letter mail, with the exception of international letters. It simply doesn’t make sense to be proposing legislation before you look at the relevant issues. The proposed legislation doesn’t make much sense either. Canada Post’s letter mail volumes declined for the first time in 2008 and again in 2009. The corporation clearly needs international letters as a source of revenue to maintain and improve public postal service. Furthermore, most people in this country are opposed to deregulation of Canada Post. They do not support eroding or eliminating Canada Post’s exclusive privilege. Close to 70% of people oppose postal deregulation according to a 2008 Ipsos Reid poll.
Some remailers have argued that the French version of the Canada Post Corporation Act should carry no weight and that the English version would prevail. This argument has been rejected by the courts, as a result of which those businesses are now outlaws.
I draw your attention to the two recommendations we are submitting to the committee. They appear on the last page. We are asking that Part 15 of Bill C-9 be withdrawn. We're also asking that measures be taken to shut down the five or six international mail companies that are violating the law and that there be consultations with Canada Post and CUPW concerning the possibility of offering employment to workers at these companies. That's important for us. I think we'll have to debate the question of the jobs that are at issue.
Thank you for listening. I'll be very pleased to answer your questions.