Government Operations Committee on June 6th, 2006

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I'm not suggesting comfort issues; I'm talking about issues that might be safety concerns. I have great respect for people who go out in snowstorms to deliver mail. I'm wondering if people are going to be more aware that these are unsafe situations, and if we're going to have more and more complaints and more and more communities going to centralized boxes.

What is the balancing act, and what is the union going to do to prepare itself for this inevitable balancing act?

[Deborah Bourque]

We do agree it's a balancing act. We have to balance the entitlement of rural residents to home delivery, quality public postal service, and good delivery and good service with the right of our members, under the law, to have a healthy and safe workplace. Workers have that right under the law in this country. It is a balance that needs to be found. I'm telling this committee that my union is committed to finding solutions with Canada Post that continue to provide home delivery to rural communities and continue to respect the health and safety of our members.

We will never be able to eliminate every risk or every potential risk from every job. There are always going to be traffic accidents; there are always going to be weather conditions. What we need to do is work with Canada Post to make those routes absolutely as safe as they can be made, and absolutely minimize the threat of any danger to our members, as we do with the urban group.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Mr. Alghabra has agreed to waive his turn so that we have time to debate his motion; therefore, I'll go to Mr. Albrecht.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to Ms. Bourque and Mr. Bickerton for coming.

Representing a riding that's rural and urban and suburban, I want to highlight the importance of continuing rural delivery, and I support moratoriums on the closure of rural post offices.

However, I am concerned about the safety issues you've outlined. How many right-hand delivery vehicles has Canada Post tested? I understand some right-hand delivery vehicles have been tested.

[Deborah Bourque]

A number of our members, not all of them, in the urban operations bargaining unit deliver mail in right-hand-drive vehicles.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

But there are no rural ones at this point.

[Deborah Bourque]

No. Our rural members are required to provide their own vehicles; it's a holdover from when they were independent contractors.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

All right. The second question has a little different angle. What criteria are in place for a suburban area where new housing has developed and they currently have these superboxes? At what point does home delivery become...? Is there a formula, or is it a case-by-case decision? I'm interested in knowing what's followed there.

[Deborah Bourque]

Yes, there used to be a formula: any community of 2,000 or more points of call automatically got door-to-door delivery. Unfortunately, that fell by the wayside about 10 or 15 years ago when Canada Post started putting community mailboxes or supermailboxes, as they called them back then, into all new developments. There are really absurd situations where our members provide door-to-door delivery on one street, walk past another street that has community mailboxes, and deliver door to door.

Canada Post has tended not to expand door-to-door delivery. We've worked very hard with the communities and with community organizations to try to get more door-to-door delivery. We believe people in this country are entitled to door-to-door delivery for a whole number of good reasons: seniors, people with disabilities, people with kids--they ought to get home delivery. We think there should be a formula, because there's no formula and no explanation for how it works now.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

As a member of Parliament representing a suburban area, what could I do to influence Canada Post to bring that kind of delivery to a certain area? It would have to be on a case-by-case basis, you say.

[Deborah Bourque]

I guess so, unless this committee wants to recommend some kind of formula for door-to-door delivery, and we could certainly work with you on that. But I guess your option is to complain to Canada Post and mobilize the community. If the community mobilizes itself and puts pressure on Canada Post, it may be able to achieve door-to-door delivery.

[Geoff Bickerton]

The 1989 Postal Services Review Committee, which was established by the government of the time, looked at this issue and recommended that Canada Post put aside a certain amount of its profits and use that to expand door-to-door delivery in those areas where it would be feasible.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

We'll go to Madam Thibault.

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I'm sorry, Madam Chair. I thought we were going to have a debates and I did not prepare any other questions. I will pass for now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Okay.

Madam Nash.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yes, we've had a lot of questions about rural delivery. I've heard you say that it is quite possible to maintain door-to-door, or in essence mailbox-to-mailbox, rural delivery and protect people's health and safety, and that one needn't be sacrificed for the other.

But what I have also heard you say is that there is the potential to undermine rural delivery by privatizing some of the more profitable, lucrative urban mail services. I'm wondering if you could talk a bit more about that, because it seems to me that the universal provision of Canada Post's services is something that was put in place by our grandparents, I suppose, or great-grandparents, when they set up this service as a nation-building exercise, with the provision that everyone in the country, no matter where they lived, would have equal access, at the same price, to mail service.

We've heard that with these community boxes it is already being undermined to some degree. Can you describe a little more fully your concern about the potential to undermine rural delivery service through the privatization of the lucrative urban service?

[Deborah Bourque]

I think a good example of this is United Parcel Service's complaint under the North American Free Trade Agreement. If they win, or if the Canadian government settles the case before the tribunal, then what will likely happen is that UPS will have access to Canada Post's infrastructure and the urban markets. The problem is that they'll maximize their profits in those lucrative urban areas at Canada Post's expense, and Canada Post needs the profits it makes in urban areas to finance the universal service obligation. It costs a lot of money to deliver to rural communities. Even if you pay rural deliverers low wages, it still costs a lot of money to deliver. So Canada Post needs the profits it makes in downtown Toronto to continue to be able to provide rural mail delivery.

If competitors like UPS do get access to that market, that will undermine the universal service obligation. And I should say that the universal service obligation is an international obligation. It's like a treaty under the United Nations, through the Universal Postal Union. All national postal administrations are members of the Universal Postal Union, and they're bound by the universal service obligation.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Are you saying that if the lucrative urban markets are privatized, or if there is that competition, then to maintain that commitment and provide service in rural markets, it could in fact take higher taxes to provide that service, which there is an absolute obligation to provide?

[Deborah Bourque]

Well, yes. We would hate to see Canada Post go back to the days when it was a drain on the public purse. And it hasn't been. Canada Post has had 11 consecutive years of profits. So yes, Canada Post would have to find the revenues somewhere to continue to provide universal service, or it would have to pull back. It would have to undermine that universal service. It would have to pull back on rural delivery and maybe go to three days a week or two days a week in rural communities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Ms. Gallant, go ahead, please.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and through you, Ms. Bourque.

I represent a rural Ontario riding, Renfrew--Nipissing--Pembroke. Rural mail service is an important issue in my constituency, but unlike in the situation of urban dwellers, the information highway has yet to be built in large sections of my riding, and high-speed broadband is on our wish list.

Ever since rural mail carriers became Canada Post employees and members of CUPW, so-called health and safety issues are resulting in more and more rural households being denied mail service. I have situations in which seniors who used to have their mail delivered to the end of their driveway now have to walk half a mile to pick it up. This is particularly treacherous in the winter. Residents on Schutt Road in the Palmer Rapids area of Renfrew County now have a large grey mailbox, whereas they had home delivery previously.

On behalf of people like Bernice Liedtke, Doug, Don, Aaron, and Lawrence Marquardt, what is the official position of your union on the problem of not delivering mail for safety reasons in places where no problem existed previously?

[Deborah Bourque]

I'm not convinced that there wasn't a problem previously. These routes didn't become unsafe overnight. There were problems in the past. The problem is people were afraid to raise their complaints because their contracts could be terminated without cause. They weren't covered by the just cause provisions of the Canada Labour Code. These workers had no rights. They were independent contactors. They couldn't complain. If they did complain, they were told to go find another job.

They now have some rights under the Canada Labour Code to protect their health and safety, but our commitment is to work with Canada Post to make sure that seniors, in communities like those, don't have to walk half a mile to pick up their mail, and to consider the needs of our members' health and safety while continuing to provide quality service to those residents.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

On a curve or where there's no shoulder, there may be a safety factor. Prior to bringing the issue to Labour Canada, did members make the suggestion to move the individual mail boxes that were a problem, to set them back so that the potentially hazardous location was avoided? Was that a suggestion, or did they go directly and make the complaint , which resulted in this?

[Deborah Bourque]

I don't know. I would assume that those discussions had taken place. I can't say specifically that every rural route mail courier who invoked their right to refuse had taken those steps, but these folks know the work they do, and they know their communities.