Earlier I talked about parcel delivery on weekends, mornings, and evenings.
With regard to business hours, it is important to note that, in 2003, the union allowed Canada Post to use part-time staff at postal outlets, precisely in order to extend business hours into evenings and weekends. Canada Post decided not to offer that option.
Canada Post operates the other way around. It sells franchises and then employs the strangulation principle. It opens franchises and sends its commercial clientele to them, as a result of which traffic at the corporate postal outlet declines. It justifies cutting business hours by saying that those franchises have extended hours. In the end, it closes post offices. That is the approach it has used for the past 25 or 30 years, but it has done so increasingly in recent years.
CUPW is extremely open. There is a pilot project at Richmond Hill, in the Toronto area, where a post office is open evenings and weekends. Our union is very much in favour of this kind of Canada Post business. We are ready to work evenings and weekends, that is to say seven days a week.