Good morning, honourable members.
My name is John Rae. I appear as first vice-chair of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. We are Canada's cross-disability coalition working for a more accessible and accepting Canada. As such, we consider reliable home delivery of the mail an important part of the fabric of what makes Canada great.
In terms of specifics, we support the government's moratorium on the creation of more community mailboxes. We recommend that the moratorium be made permanent, and that the previous work, if possible, be somewhat reversed so that more Canadians receive home delivery.
The move toward community mailboxes has a disproportionately negative effect on our community, and I think also for women who are in abusive relationships. Simply getting to the mailbox for some of us is a barrier, a new barrier. In the year 2016, we think it's unreasonable that government entities should do anything that creates new barriers to our participation in Canadian society, and that's what's happening.
Our former chair, Mr. Tony Dolan, who lives in a suburb of Charlottetown, already has to rely on his spouse to pick up his mail. I consider that unacceptable.
We want no more community mailboxes. We believe that Canada Post is a public service and, as such, must remain public. Thus, any notions of privatization must be resisted. In rural areas, it is particularly important, and that's one of the many reasons why we support postal banking.
We have heard dire predictions about the future of our postal service. So far, the financial picture of Canada Post over the last number of years does not bear out this paranoia. Yes, it is true that the use of the postal service has changed since more and more people use the Internet. That's a problem for our community, many of whom are poor and cannot afford a computer.
If we look at what's happened so far, the corporation has done an excellent job of finding new sources of revenue. We see postal banking as one of those new aspects that excites us and should be seriously looked at. We believe that the post office is uniquely positioned, given the number of outlets that it already has across the country, to institute such a system and to operate it effectively.
It would, as other participants have suggested, help deal with the problems of payday loaners. I think Al Capone would have been proud that these people have found a way to do legally what he and his loan shark cronies were unable to do back in the 1930s. I think he'd be proud of them. These entities particularly prey upon the poor, and poverty is such a reality throughout our community, so this is an area that I think is exciting.
One of the reasons why I think mail usage has gone down, and only one, because there are others, is the excessive rate increase that happened. This had dire consequences for small businesses, which, after all, we are told, are the main creators of new jobs in this country, and also for community organizations that use the mail to send out notices of meetings or conduct direct mail campaigns. It is my hope that such excessive rate increases will not be our experience in the future.
In conclusion, we want regular, reliable home delivery of the mail, five days a week, throughout Canada.
Thank you.