Yes, I found that quite interesting. My initial response is—and I think you would hear this from the banking community—does the banking community need more competition, particularly from the government? I think there was reference to doing some type of partnership with Purolator. In the business community, we support P3s, public-private partnerships, for infrastructure; they're a great idea. They may be appropriate for service delivery.
But then again, the other side is this: I know one of our local MPs has held pre-budget meetings on a number of occasions, and frequently he has people from the banking community in rural areas of the Waterloo region. We have three cities and four rural townships, so we have a very diversified economy here. The point that's often brought up with the banking community in rural Ontario is, why is the Government of Canada loaning money to farmers through the Farm Credit corporation? I think the explanation is, number one, the federal government is probably making some money doing this. The traditional response from the banking community is, “Gosh, there's available credit out there for farmers through the banks; why does the Government of Canada need to be in the line of business of loaning money to farmers?” Some farmers will come back and say, “Well, yeah, I went to the Royal Bank and they wouldn't give money, so I went to the Farm Credit corporation and they did.” So I can see some arguments there.
Does Canada Post need to be competing where the private sector doesn't need competition? In terms of this idea of Canada Post getting into banking, I read the report and I wasn't exactly sure. There are a lot more questions there than answers. Of course, this is just a preliminary discussion paper, but I would warn, moving forward, that we exercise some caution in terms of who does Canada Post want to compete against? I think that's a key consideration.
Going back to what I said earlier, by identifying the priority areas for Canada Post or any other government agency, it comes to issue of, does the Government of Canada, or the Government of Ontario, or the Regional Municipality of Waterloo need to be in that area when somebody else is already doing it? I think that's really a key consideration moving forward.