Evidence of meeting #13 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was corporation.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
You mentioned workforce reductions mostly through attrition. I wonder if that's continuing and how many costs you were bearing by not immediately eliminating surplus or redundant positions but rather by going through the attrition practice?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
We have attrition coming up, there is no question. Our plan was to respect the collective agreements and manage the attrition as we could implement productivity and efficiency gains. We managed to do that during the course of the last two and a half years. Now it is on hold.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for coming today.
I'm not sure if my questions will relate more to Mr. Côté's work or Mr. Chopra's, but as we're looking forward to the future of Canada Post and its efficiency and its ability to build community in a compassionate way in accordance with its service charter, I've a few questions about the perceived deterioration in labour relations with the corporation, particularly as it relates to route assessment.
How much did the corporation pay in overtime in 2015? It doesn't show in the financial statements. Could we have a ballpark on that as a percentage or a dollar value as compared to the overall labour cost?
Group President, Physical Delivery Network, Canada Post Corporation
If you give me a bit of leeway, about 3% of the hours are overtime.
The way the corporation structures the routes—and they structure according to the process prescribed in the labour agreement where we've got labour observers—it is done on an average. For example, If we have high volume, if we've got absenteeism, when a new employee gets on a route, if there's a snowstorm, after a statutory holiday, there's a period where you go above the average and we pay overtime.
We monitor overtime all the time. It is, first of all, more costly. It is also not good for employee health and safety. It is not something we are striving to do. But if absenteeism is high, some days we may have somebody—either voluntarily or not—deliver the route. From time to time you're going to see overtime in our network, but we make sure this is kept at a reasonable level.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Are there areas in the country where a change has recently been made where you're finding that overtime is larger than expected and health and safety are impacted in those places?
Group President, Physical Delivery Network, Canada Post Corporation
After a change, it's quite typical to see overtime. Employees are unfamiliar with the route. They're unfamiliar with where they need to go. There's a loss of productivity. You'll find that over a period of 10 to 12 weeks after the restructuring, the overtime will go back to what it was.
Again, the way to structure the route is prescribed in the labour agreement.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
When a route is restructured, as described in the labour agreement, certain calculations seem to be based on assumptions regarding the percentage of mail that will be delivered on a particular day on a route. When errors are made in those types of calculations, those fundamental calculations, how quickly is the corporation able to react to those types of errors and the impact they might be having on employees? Is it done immediately? Is it done over a couple of months? What's the timeline for correcting errors in route assessment allocations?
Group President, Physical Delivery Network, Canada Post Corporation
We do it as quickly as we can. On record, working with the employee, if a supervisor knows that an employee has a route that is not manageable, I'm expecting them, regardless of whether the route is restructured or not, to take immediate action to fix that.
Our employees work hard. They work in all kinds of conditions. As I think someone said, it's a tough job. We all recognize that, and we want to make sure their job is doable. We want them at work. We don't want them injured and stressed out.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Thank you, Mr. Côté. I'll quote you on that.
As we look at section 11 of the service charter for Canada Post, it reaffirms the moratorium on closure of rural post offices. I'm seeing here, based on a couple of the most recent annual reports, that about 32 rural post offices were closed, or were closed this past year; maybe 34 of them would have been closed in 2014.
Have any of these been reopened?
Susan Margles Vice-President, Government Relations and Policy Framework, Canada Post Corporation
Sorry: have any of them been reopened?
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Yes. Have you been able to restaff or reopen those post offices, those rural post offices, on which there was a moratorium on closure in the intervening period?
Vice-President, Government Relations and Policy Framework, Canada Post Corporation
In every case where we're facing an unforeseen circumstance—somebody is retiring, or somebody has an unfortunate incident, or sometimes there's damage to a post office that needs to be dealt with in another way—the first thing we look to do is restaff. That is part of our service charter commitment. That's the first thing we do. In many circumstances we go through more than one cycle of looking to restaff.
As you may know, some of these communities are quite small, and there's not always somebody willing to take on that responsibility and that job. If we are not able to find someone in the community, we consult with the local elected representatives at the municipal level, or the member of Parliament, etc., to try to determine the best way forward. Only after going through that process, and providing notification to the community, would we go forward and close.
So yes, we always search to restaff in the first instance. There are many cases, beyond the number you see in the annual report that did eventually close, where we did indeed restaff.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
These numbers here are based on a determination of what “rural” means. Can you tell the committee what determination is used for “rural”? Are there other post offices not shown in the section 11 analysis in your annual report that have been closed over the past two years?
Vice-President, Government Relations and Policy Framework, Canada Post Corporation
The question of rural is actually a very interesting question. It's one that I expect will be addressed in the course of the task force review and perhaps in the deliberations of the committee.
In fact, the rural moratorium that's in place today and has been in place for many years did not really define “rural” in terms of distance or in terms of population. It was a list of post offices that at the time were determined to be rural, including communities that were not necessarily rural but perhaps had only one corporate post office in them. So it's not really definition-based. It's based on a point in time, and that's the basis on which we manage that today.
Conservative
Conservative
Steven Blaney Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First, my colleague from Alberta would like to say something to the Canada Post representatives.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Oh, yes.
I was remiss in not thanking you and Canada Post for the help you've given in Fort McMurray. As an Albertan, that's important to me, and I appreciate it. I pass on the sincere appreciation of the folks in northern Alberta.
Thank you very much.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
I would like to in fact—
Conservative
