Government Operations Committee on Sept. 27th, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Weir, please, for seven minutes.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thank you for the presentations.

Ms. Dollin, we have a federal government that was elected on a solemn promise to reinstate home mail delivery. It doesn't sound like you have a great deal of confidence that it's going to happen. I wonder if you could speak for a moment about where you, as municipalities, feel the federal government is actually at on this issue.

[Lynn Dollin]

We're looking in that direction. That's what we're hoping for.

First of all, we're asking, particularly for the rural and the northern and remote communities to maintain what they already have and to allow the door-to-door delivery in the rural Ontario municipalities as well. I've mentioned that we've received numerous different motions from many of our over 400 members, and all of them are looking for the return of door-to-door mail delivery.

But we also aren't so closed-minded. We just want to talk. We want to be part of that conversation and we want to make sure that whatever that end is, it's something that we've come to a conclusion on together.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Excellent.

Mr. Mazer, thanks so much for your comments on the Canada Post pension plan and the distinction between the going concern versus solvency valuation. I think a lot of the debate about the future of Canada Post has been driven by this bogeyman of a $6-billion unfunded liability. I've certainly tried to make the point at this committee that the number is entirely based on a solvency valuation, which is based on pretty extreme assumptions that don't really apply to Canada Post.

I wonder if you could perhaps explain that it would be a reasonable thing, from an actuarial and an accounting point of view, to exempt Canada Post from those solvency payments.

[Alex Mazer]

I do think it could be a sound policy move to have an exemption for solvency payments, provided certain changes are made to the plan. There are various different views within the pension community on this issue. Some provinces, such as Quebec, have exempted single employer pension plans from solvency payments. My view would be that it ought to be accompanied by some changes to the plan.

I also think there are some opportunities here to improve the plan for the benefit of both management and workers and also for Canadians. Some of our best pension plans do contribute a lot to the Canadian economy and are a major source of strength for Canada. I see no reason that the Canada Post pension plan should not be managed according to the same principles.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Excellent.

Mr. Borden, you spoke about the problems with our current predatory payday lending industry. I wonder if you might be able to speak a bit more about the role that you believe Canada Post could play in providing a superior alternative to that type of financial service.

[Donna Borden]

Some of these payday lenders provide short-term loans, but they also provide a service so that people can send money or transfer money to their families—with fees—and we think Canada Post could provide that at a lower fee and still make a profit at it. There are post offices all over the rural areas everywhere, so it would be very easy to set up a bank for people to have access to in order to send money and get short-term loans.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

The organization you represent is obviously out in the community and in contact with a lot of people. Is it your sense that there would be quite a bit of uptake for postal banking if Canada Post were to offer these types of services?

[Donna Borden]

Yes. In fact, our members have suggested it to us, and a lot of them are quite excited about the possibility of having postal banking, because with the post office they can go in and send money. As you know, Canada is multicultural and we have people from all over who send money overseas, and they pay quite a fee. Canada Post could charge less for it, and it would also be a profit for Canada Post. It saves jobs, and I think it would be better because it would provide services for everyone. It's closer for people. Banks are closer for people in the rural areas as well.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Excellent.

Mr. Mazer, I wonder if you could speak a little bit more about the possibility of combining the Canada Post pension plan with other public sector plans in the federal sector. Is that something you think would make sense or that we should be taking a serious look at?

[Alex Mazer]

I think that should be one of the options on the table as part of a structured process. If you look across the country, you see that this practice of pooling public sector assets together to achieve efficiencies of scale is fairly common. It's used in B.C. and Alberta, in Quebec with La Caisse, and federally with PSP Investments. Recently, Ontario set up the Investment Management Corporation of Ontario to do the same thing.

There's the question of the pooling of assets, and then there's also the question of the merger of plans, which can be a little bit more complicated because you need to take into consideration the funded status and the various plans, comparing the two sets of benefits. That requires detailed actuarial and legal work. But there could be opportunities to achieve greater scale and to also spread risk across various plans, which could also bolster the case for a solvency exemption.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

You have a minute and a half, Mr. Weir, if you care to use it.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Excellent. I have another question for Ms. Dollin.

On the issue of door-to-door delivery, some have suggested that it might be possible to maintain it for people who have mobility issues while using community mailboxes for everyone else. I'm wondering, just from a municipal planning perspective, if that is a solution that you see as being practical or realistic.

[Lynn Dollin]

Thank you for the question.

Yes, there is AODA, the Accessible Ontarians Disabilities Act directorate, which I think is something that you should be looking at, along with the work on age-friendly communities and aging in place done by AMO. The recommendations in both of those documents I think would serve you well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Now it's Mr. Whalen's turn.

You have seven minutes, please.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you very much.

Just as a point of information, as somebody who had to defend the nuanced nature of the Liberal Party policy during the last election, this is exactly what we promised, Mr. Weir: that we would halt the change and that we would consult with Canadians and try to manage the change better. You might have been talking about your party's policy, which was rejected by Canadians. I will move on.

I will say that change management is what we're talking about, because the task force report is pretty clear that a business-as-usual approach for Canada Post will put it into a $700-million-a-year deficit position in about 10 years, and this is what we're trying to avoid. We're trying to save Canada Post. It's important to Canadians.

My first question is really for you, Ms. Dollin. What has been the experience of your members in working with the current management of Canada Post to manage the change that has already happened?

[Lynn Dollin]

Well, I can say that change happens, and probably the first time we hear about it is from a resident who has told us about what has happened. There has been very little consultation between municipalities and Canada Post.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Okay.

The municipal leaders we heard from in Montreal yesterday were much more forceful on this. They said there was a complete lack of trust. Would your membership trust Canada Post's current management to handle this change? Or do we need new management to deliver on the change and to manage the new vision for Canada Post?

[Lynn Dollin]

Well, I'm new at this job, so maybe I haven't developed that level of animosity yet.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Lynn Dollin]

I would suggest that whoever we're talking to needs to have two ears: they need to listen to what municipalities have to say about what's going to work on the ground, what's going to work in northern Ontario, and what's going to work in large urban centres. They need to hear from us, because we know better than anyone what's going to work in our communities.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

We've heard a lot that there's no one-size-fits-all solution for Canada Post because all communities have slightly different needs. In addition to postal delivery, what other services might Canada Post help with to deliver services to your members who manage rural communities?

[Lynn Dollin]

I think that any services they can deliver would be helpful. I'm going to use another personal example from my community. Again, it's fairly large, and you would think 35,000 people would be sustainable, but it's also a very large community and there are tiny pockets. You can't assume that a population of that size is all going to be contained in a small area.

In our community, we've just had a bank close, the only bank within the community, so there is no opportunity unless you do Internet. We have a lot of older folks in the community who really aren't interested or just don't want to learn. They need that post office for many things, even if it's just to go in to say hello and chat in the morning, have a face-to-face conversation, and pick up their mail. Also, as I mentioned, we have people who do use the wiring service there, particularly the seasonal workers who are here to work on our farms.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Mazer, thank you for highlighting the pension plan reform and how it might allow us to bridge the gap between the union's position on the plan and management's position on the plan. Do you know if the union has suggested joint management as a means to achieve this? Do you have any familiarity with the negotiations around management of the postal pension plan?

[Alex Mazer]

I don't have detailed familiarity with what went on in recent negotiations. I know that a variety of potential reforms were tabled, both in the context of that collective bargaining and other negotiations with the other unions.

Part of the challenge is that collective bargaining is a difficult place to resolve those kinds of issues. The better pension organizations have tended to take pension issues out of collective bargaining into a specific process that is more about trying to build consensus between management and labour, and not use it as a bargaining chip when there are many other complex issues on the table.