We share your concerns. We have serious concerns that the closure of the Quebec City letter sorting facility is the first step in downsizing.
There are 22 mechanized postal facilities across the country. In many provinces, there is more than one postal facility, and in some provinces those two postal facilities are within driving distance of each other, the way Quebec City and Montreal are.
We're concerned that this is the first step. Canada Post announces a review. They say now they had no plans, but then why did they give the union notice under our collective agreement that they were going to be explicitly reviewing their network of postal facilities? They gave us that notice—we didn't dream that up—that they were starting with Quebec City. Three weeks later, they announced they were closing the Quebec City facility. We couldn't believe they would conduct a serious review and make that decision in three weeks. In fact, an arbitrator informed us that the decision had actually been made back in February, in violation of our collective agreement, and they hadn't informed the union.
It raised some alarm bells for us that this was the intention in terms of the rest of the network, that they were going to look at those opportunities where they believed they could downsize their network of post office facilities. So we're very concerned that Quebec City is just the tip of the iceberg.