I can give you two examples. One is what's called Appendix T, a provision in our collective agreement for a joint committee with funding, and with equal responsibility, allowing us to test new initiatives—job creation initiatives and service expansion initiatives. It allows the corporation to contract out work without taking a whole bunch of risk with their normal operating budget. There is a special fund set aside for these projects. The projects have been extremely successful, but we've been unable to get any projects through that committee for the last two years. We used to be very successful in retail services, expanding retail services, expanding parcel services, and in dealing with new technology, creating jobs for our members and improving service for communities. It didn't cost Canada Post a lot of money. We thought it was a win-win situation, but we're not going anywhere with those any more.
The most recent example is rural delivery. A number of our members in rural communities have invoked their right to refuse under the Canada Labour Code. Legitimate health and safety concerns also have a real impact on service in those communities. Canada Post's response was not to sit down and work with the union and come up with viable options to resolve this issue, but their first reaction was to remove service from those communities, put in community mailboxes without any notice and without any consultation with the communities, and then just live with the resulting backlash that came, justifiably, from those communities.
We're trying right now to find a way to work out those issues with Canada Post, because we're very concerned about our members' health and safety. We're also extremely concerned that this is the first step in the abandonment of rural mail delivery, or at least a demonstration of a lack of commitment to rural service.
We could work this out. We have lots of good ideas, and there are lots of forums for us to work this out together, but we're not seeing any willingness from Canada Post to actually sit down and work this out with the union.