Thank you very, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for coming.
Clearly, I'd think we'd agree that the brand of Canada Post is strong and it's paramount. It allows it to attract its customers for its delivery and logistics business. Without the trust of Canadians, that business would not exist. People would not trust Canada Post to do the delivery and logistics it does without it.
When we look at what has happened over the course of maybe the last two years, at least from my perspective, there seems to have been a whittling down of that trust in that a five-point plan was put to Canadians, imposed upon them, and it lacked public support. There was certainly a great deal of consternation during the election.
Then again this summer, on both the corporate side and the union side, the disagreements over labour put a lot of mistrust into Canadians' hearts about whether or not they should continue to rely on Canada Post to meet their payroll needs, their banking needs, their chequing needs, and their delivery needs. They moved to alternative sources of delivery or simply decided to transfer more of their business, perhaps prematurely, to electronic methods. There is a certain amount of concern.
I want to focus just a little more on the financials here, to try to get a sense of opportunities that might not have been canvassed by the task force but that might be available. When we look at their report, they say there's $400 million of potential savings, which includes $80 million already achieved, by going to community mailboxes. We have conversion of 80 of the highest-volume corporate post offices to franchises for savings of $177 million. Those two ideas seem to be fairly independent.
Would you agree that both of those things could be implemented independently and those savings would not have so much of an overlap, in terms of the benefits to Canada Post?