Over the last five years Canada Post has embarked on lots of changes. The spirit of those changes is twofold. Almost half of our focus is on growing revenues.
For example, our parcel business has grown over the last five years by over $400 million. As I mentioned, with 1.6 billion mail pieces disappearing over the last decade, on average that accounts for a billion dollars of revenue lost. Half of that we have been able to recover through growing our parcel business. The other half we have been able to do through some of the transformation work that we undertook over the last five years. That also accounts for roughly $400 million.
We have managed to balance those competing needs so far, but given that the committee now has the task of looking at the options, talking to Canadians, we really look forward to your recommendations and the decision on the next phase of Canada Post's mandate. As you rightly asked, is it a business? Is it a public service? Should it be financially self-sustaining? All of those questions are rightly being discussed and debated in the right forum.