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.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
—and the corporation continues to do that. It has a long history. It has a 253-year history of doing that respectfully. It's doing that constantly. Even today, customers are calling us for customer service issues. We do it with the utmost respect, and our call centres are employees delivering mail. In the process of doing that—
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
It's okay, Mr. Chopra, because section 5 of the service charter says “that you shall consult”, and what you're telling me is you did not consult the public, which is fine. It was an answer that I was looking for on whether there was a wider consultation, because we as parliamentarians...you're a crown corporation, and we do not expect you to be running inefficiently. We expect you to meet your bottom line or make a profit. The bottom line is we end up bearing the burden and the annoyance of our constituents when you do not consult them.
There have been a lot of write-ups and things that talk about the five-point plan being prepared by The Conference Board of Canada. Is that true or false?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
Canada Post is responsible for all of its affairs. We do not have third parties prepare our plans.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
So therefore you're saying that the Conference Board, when it wanted to provide you with a restructuring plan, did not provide you with how to streamline Canada Post, as was your mandate?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
Canada Post looks at international best practices, Canada Post looks at expert opinions, Canada Post looks at other postal administrations, looks at other ideas that are coming through, and that's how we have evolved over the years.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
In your role as the CEO, when you were doing the five-point preparation—that's a strategic plan, and every organization needs to do a strategic plan and think of all the issues that might come into play, for example the potential trends, etc.—when you were doing your strategic planning, did you in any way think of eliminating the mail delivery as part of your savings?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
Corporate plans are prepared looking at a wide range of factors: interest rates, expenses, inflation, cost—
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
I'm an accountant. You have to tell me those things in simple terms.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
—so I don't think we can look at just one factor in isolation in planning an $8-billion corporation's financial plan.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
We are familiar because we deal with $290-billion revenues as this committee, so we're not in a place that we don't understand. My question has been (a) consultation, and (b), you said you had looked at best practices from different jurisdictions so can you name a few that you did for this five-point plan?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
We look at the global best practices. There are reports that are published for the—
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
I explained earlier on in my remarks—
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
—that the postal solutions, particularly postal solutions, have to be unique to the country and its geography and history. We have had community mailboxes in Canada since the 1980s. Other jurisdictions have other solutions. We have to look at solutions that are best for Canada and best for Canadians.
Liberal
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
—because of my intervention.
For the benefit of the committee, and I say this respectfully, there are rules that each committee must abide by, and I say this to both witnesses and committee members. Witnesses are obliged to try, wherever possible, to give direct answers to direct questions. I also remind committee members that all questions put should be done respectfully. I remind all committee members that we have witnesses here who are guests and they're also public servants. Please, if we could abide on that level, both for the witnesses in answering the questions, and committee members when putting them, your chair would appreciate it very much.
We're now going to a five-minute round, and we'll start with Mr. McCauley.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Thanks for joining us today.
The pension holiday ends 2017. I saw somewhere it'll be approximately $6.8 billion by the end of the holiday?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
Yes. As of last year, there's a $6.2-billion pension solvency deficit.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay. Going forward with the five-point action plan, which has just been suspended, what kind of risk are we looking at for added pension deficit by suspending the five-point action plan and continuing down the path? What are we looking at extra, ballpark? I know you can't tell exactly, but ballpark-ish.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation
I think the best estimate is the most current estimate, because it fluctuates with the interest rate movements, and there are other actuarial assumptions that drive that. The solvency deficit over the last three years—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Suspending the five-year action plan, what effect is that going to have on...?