Don't change the word!
Evidence of meeting #12 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was service.
Evidence of meeting #12 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was service.
9:10 a.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
9:10 a.m.
The Clerk of the Committee Ms. Bibiane Ouellette
You are voting on Mr. Proulx's amendment. You already have a copy of it.
Can I dispense?
9:10 a.m.
The Clerk
Yeas, five; nays, six.
9:10 a.m.
The Clerk
That's right.
9:10 a.m.
The Clerk
That's right.
9:10 a.m.
Liberal
June 22nd, 2006 / 9:10 a.m.
The Clerk
It was adopted already.
9:10 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Diane Marleau
The amendment was adopted.
They want to have a vote on the actual amended motion, which hasn't been voted on.
Madam Thibault.
9:10 a.m.
Bloc
Louise Thibault Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
I would ask for a recorded vote on the motion, as amended.
9:10 a.m.
The Clerk
You are now voting on the main motion, as amended. You all have a copy.
(The motion is negatived unanimously)
9:15 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Diane Marleau
I want to thank you, because I had asked you to agree among yourselves. I was not expecting this kind of an agreement. It's been defeated. That means that we're back to what we now have. If members agree, we can look at another proposal at a future date.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
We're now going to go to our witness, Madam Greene. Madam Greene has previously been before this committee.
As you know, we'll give you approximately 10 minutes to make a presentation. Each of the parties will then get seven minutes for questions and answers for the first six people. We'll then go to five minutes.
Madam Greene.
9:15 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
Madam Marleau, to you as chairman of the government operations committee, and to members of the committee, I would start by saying how delighted I am to be back before you.
It was this committee, an all-party committee, that confirmed my appointment. It was my pleasure then, and it is an even greater pleasure today because I've now been in my post for over a year. I can certainly offer more on the operations of the post today than I could the last time.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear.
I know that for members of this committee, and in fact everywhere in the House today, matters of transparency and accountability are perhaps the most important ones for all public office holders of any kind to be really aware of.
It's my pleasure to tell you that in that spirit, Canada Post had its first ever annual meeting last week in Winnipeg. I believe we are probably the first crown corporation, certainly the first commercial crown corporation, to have had such a meeting. It was a great pleasure to introduce the issues and operations of the post office to a wide variety of stakeholders, customers, suppliers, and Canadians who are obviously very interested in receiving their mail.
Before answering your questions, I would like to talk a little bit about Canada Post operations, and about our aspirations and achievements. Many things have changed since I came before you seven months ago, including the government, of course, and the composition of the Committee. Everything goes exceedingly quickly these days, and people at Canada Post are aware of that, probably more so than anyone else.
The scope of this company, Canada Post, is enormous. As we sit here right now on Parliament Hill, letter carriers all across the country are delivering on foot 40 million pieces of mail to 14 million mailboxes in every reach, in every town, village, and city of the country.
We provide service through perhaps the largest network of retail offices of any company. There are about 7,000 postal offices and dealerships across the country. We employ 71,000 people in the Canada Post group of companies. That makes us the sixth largest employer in Canada. And every year we add about a quarter of a million new addresses we have to serve--we're pleased to serve. In addition, we spend about $2.8 billion every year as a big buyer of services and goods all across the country, and that $2.8 billion employs an additional 30,000 Canadians.
What we do, and equally importantly what we do not do, are things I want to talk to you about today. For example, we do not rely on the taxpayers of this country to pay for or subsidize the operations of Canada Post. In fact, I'm so pleased to tell you this company has been profitable for 11 straight years. The profitability this year, at $199 million, is a modest level of profitability given that our revenues are almost $7 billion. Many of you come to this honourable committee having run businesses of your own, and you will recognize that while that is a modest level of return, I'm very pleased that at least it's on the right side of the ledger.
That wasn't always the case. Madame Marleau has great expertise in postal matters, having at one point been the minister responsible for Canada Post. So Madame Marleau will remember what I call the bad old days when Canada Post was reliant on the taxpayers of this country for more than half a billion dollars of subsidy in a single year. Half a billion dollars in those days would be worth a great deal more today.
This achievement of continuous profitability for 11 straight years is one I wish to continue during my time as the CEO and president of Canada Post. Members of this committee, we do this with some of the lowest letter mail rates of all G-7 countries. I think that is a considerable achievement.
Our whole reason for existing is to serve Canadians. The methods we employ to that end have changed dramatically in our 150 years of serving Canada, in all our different incarnations. For example, there is a general belief, which is not accurate, that the letters we deliver from one person to another are the mainstay of our corporation. Canadians clearly value that a great deal, but the reality is that personal correspondence only represents 2 per cent of our revenues.
That doesn't mean we don't take very seriously every letter, every personal letter, every letter of any kind that is given to this company to deliver in the country. In fact, I'd be remiss now, today, if I didn't speak a little bit about the disruptions in service that we have had in some parts of the country.
I would like to apologize to members of this committee who, in their ridings, have experienced some disruption of service. We have been working very hard with some of you--Mr. Temelkovski, for example, and Monsieur Bonin as well--where you've had disruptions in service in rural mail delivery. I want you to know that I'm very sorry for Canadians who've had to be inconvenienced, and we are doing our absolute utmost to make sure that convenient alternatives are getting put in place as quickly as possible.
Rural mail carriers are required to repeatedly stop their vehicles on the sides of roads, and many of these roads are not the same as they were when we started rural route delivery 40 or 50 years ago.
Newmarket, for example, in Mr. Temelkovski's riding, 50 years ago was a small town and it really was quite a rural area. It is no longer that. It is now really a suburb of the city.
I know many of you will appreciate that patterns of urbanization have changed pretty starkly in the past 10, 15, or 20 years and that traffic patterns on what were once country roads now have way more traffic than they did even five years ago. So the hazard of frequent stopping is far greater today than it would have been 10 or 15 years ago. With municipal expansion--and in some provinces, municipal amalgamation is in fact the policy of the province to enable the province to better deliver services--I expect that these traffic levels are only going to get worse in certain parts of the country.
Like any employer in this country, safeguarding the health and safety of our workers is not only a moral responsibility, but now a legal responsibility, and it is a legal responsibility with far greater ramifications in terms of liability as a result of changes in the law in recent years for any company that is governed by those particular laws.
We are very committed to finding a solution anytime there is a disruption in service as a result of an employee refusing work on safety grounds. We work very hard, literally 24/7, to put alternatives in place as quickly as we possibly can. This is an absolute priority for us as a company and for me personally.
I gave Prime Minister Harper and Minister Cannon my personal undertaking that in the face of inconvenience to Canadians that results when there is a refusal to work on safety grounds, I would do everything I could to put alternatives in place quickly and for these alternatives to be as convenient as possible under the circumstances. This is only one of the challenges we face.
Another is, of course, as you know, the necessity, the requirement according to our act, to provide our service to all Canadians and to the businesses that rely upon Canada Post as an economic enabler in this country, to provide those services on a cost-efficient and profitable basis. Some of you--Madame Thibault, for example--have spoken to me personally, and actually in this committee, on rationalization of the network that we have been doing as a matter of course over the past 15 years.
Most recently, that has involved the closure of the plant in Quebec City, but I am so pleased to tell you that not one single employee--not a part-time employee, not a full-time employee--will lose their job as a result of that closure. In fact, our service to the residents of Quebec City is better today than it was before we made this operational change, as a result of having put on three additional transport routes in that area. So we are now at 13 movements a day between Montreal and Quebec City, as opposed to 10 previously.
It's a big logistics exercise to deliver 40 million pieces of mail to 14 million addresses, and thankfully we have new opportunities--new transportation and logistics opportunities arise--so that we do not have to do things today the way we did them 40, 50, or 60 years ago.
To deliver the best possible service to all of our customers, we have to function in a businesslike manner. That is more important today than it was even 10 years or 20 years ago when we were first established. Madame Marleau, you have been in this House since, I believe, 1988, so you will remember the early days when Canada Post was established as a commercial crown corporation. It is more true today than it was then. We must operate in as businesslike a fashion as we possibly can.
We must keep in mind that 90% of our revenue is coming from Canadian businesses. They still rely on Canada Post as an enabler, an economic enabler, for them. We deliver their statements, bills, and invoices. That's critically important, for Canadian businesses to get paid for the services they have provided. We help Canadian businesses through our direct marketing mail to deepen their relationships with their customers and in fact to acquire new customers at a cost that is more effective than any other way to acquire new customers. These are intensely more competitive lines of business today than they were 20 years ago, and I'm very pleased to tell you that Canada Post is committed to keeping up.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Diane Marleau
Madam Greene, maybe you'd like to wrap it up soon. You're well over your 10 minutes.
9:25 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
I'm sorry. I can wrap it up, Madam Chairman.
Our responsibilities are huge. Many of you know about them.
I'm happy to answer any questions you have. I feel we outlined our priorities reasonably well to the committee the last time I was here, so let us move directly to your questions.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
