Government Operations Committee on Sept. 28th, 2016

[Gary McNamara]

Correct. I love my job; I'd like to keep it.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

That's right.

We talked about crisis, as somebody mentioned. Do you have a perception here that Canada Post is creating a crisis? We have challenges to the financial statements, and I've now looked at the financial statements. Is this financial sustainability a crisis created to cut down services or create a crisis and blame it on labour? What's your perception? I'll hear from the two of you.

[Derek Richmond]

My perception is that it's a manufactured crisis. They want to provide less service to Canadians and more profits in their pocket.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

But the profits aren't going into their pockets, they are going back to the.... A crown corporation, when it doesn't make a profit, it has to be somehow subsidized, right? So we have to be careful there. I'm balancing the books in my head.

The reason I am saying it is a crisis is, we talked about, for example, the ad mail, which is bringing in money. The task force says its ad mail is declining. I spoke to some of the businesses yesterday and they said it was not declining, so maybe it's a manufactured crisis for a different purpose. We've put a stop to it, so hopefully you guys will help us.

Mayor.

[Gary McNamara]

I remember in the 1990s a provincial politician basically said that if you want things done, create a crisis or chaos. In reality, I get it. This is 2016. It is a crown corporation. You don't want it to be a sinkhole, a money pit, or whatever you want to call it. I get that. But I find that there has to be a better way. If cutting door-to-door delivery is going to be the be-all and end-all on the bottom line, and you're thinking 30 years down the road, what's the next step? Eliminate the mailboxes, and then we'll all have pigeonholes at the post office? There are other ways.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

So consultation is very important—

[Gary McNamara]

Absolutely.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

—because basically they are creating these mailboxes, then you have to reinvest, and then your infrastructure funding gets eliminated.

Ms. Jones and Ms. John, do you have an assessment of how many seniors live in seniors buildings versus independently at home?

[Sungee John]

Well, I can't speak for the general seniors population, but for, say, many of the ethnocultural populations, it's split. Some live in downtown apartments, senior-oriented apartments, and others do maintain homes. I would say it's fifty-fifty.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your presentations. The information you provided has been extremely informative and helpful. I would add to that, however. Should you have additional information that you think would be of benefit to the committee in our consultations, please submit that directly to our clerk.

Mayor McNamara, you've already done so, so I thank you for that.

But if there's other information any of you have that you wish to bring to our attention, please submit it to our clerk, and that will help us in our deliberations.

Once again, thank you all for being here.

We will suspend for a few moments, and I will ask the next panellists to please approach the table.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

I'm quite confident that all of you have been here for the last couple of sessions and know how these things work. I know there are three of you here, but I believe there will be only two presentations. If each of you would keep your comments to five minutes or less, I would appreciate that, and then we'll go into our round of questions.

First on my list is Ms. Johnson.

[Michelle Gouthro Johnson, Second Vice-President, Local 630, Canadian Union of Postal Workers]

Hi, I'm Michelle Johnson, second vice-president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers in Windsor. With me is our local president, Phil Lyons. I am a retail clerk at Canada Post. Phil is a letter carrier. He is also astute on questions of pension and sustainability.

I'll begin with a few points. Corporate interests have gutted our postal system, decreasing services but increasing associated costs. Many balk at paying 85¢ for a stamp to pay a bill, but not at paying $40 or more to pay bills by purchasing Internet and paying online.

In Windsor's experience, since 2013 we have lost one corporate retail office—which was Sandwich post office, the oldest post office west of Montreal, over 100 years old—and our mail processing plant. Residents of Sandwich Town, a service-deprived area, no longer have banking services or postal services.

Some of our Windsor-to-Windsor mail, which supposedly maintains a service standard of two days, now takes seven to 10 days via Toronto. The service decline encourages people to not use the mail if feasible in their case.

Many seniors and new Canadians still rely heavily on postal service, as do people whose income levels prevent them from purchasing Internet services. There are still communities without reliable Internet. Canada Post and their corporate partners have offered incentives to pay bills online. Again, these incentives are limited to those with access. Aging parents, seniors, and the poor are disadvantaged.

Further to our Windsor story, in August 2015, as you heard earlier, Canada Post converted the town of Tecumseh, which is part of the Windsor post office, to community mailboxes. A strident community fight-back campaign went unanswered. In the middle of the federal election campaign, CPC rushed to shoddily install these postal boxes. Little safety forethought was utilized in their Google map planning of these installations. Many are traffic and safety hazards due to locations. CPC didn't even follow their own criteria in regard to access, traffic, and lighting. As well, contractors perched these boxes in locations with no sidewalks, on uneven mounds of loose gravel, at precarious angles. To this day, one year later, most issues are not resolved.

A new letter carrier restructure has been set up for this fall, 2016, and a few of the more dangerous ones will return to door-to-door delivery. Unfortunately, we feel that some of this is due to the affluence of the complainants, as well as the safety aspects. We feel many in the core of town who are seniors are being needlessly put out by these hazardous boxes. Seniors who receive medical dispensation will have to reapply each winter for weekly home delivery.

The former Letter Carriers' Union of Canada used to work in conjunction with Canada Post on a program called letter carrier alert. Under this program, letter carriers acted as a lookout for things amiss while delivering mail on their routes: an ailing senior, mail piling up in a mailbox, fires, loose dogs, etc. The current Canadian Union of Postal Workers has a new proposal to revive this program as a community elder watch.

Our corporate retail post offices offer a different perspective than contracted-out retail outlets. Our highly trained clerks have usually worked in the post office for more than 20 years. Their experience is not just retail, but includes postal systems and services, starting from their previous work in processing plants or letter carrying. In addition to detailed product and service knowledge, staff must know over 60 complex, but required, corporate procedures. When clerks have the knowledge of the path of letters and parcels and all the quirks of the postal service, they are more capable of serving their retail customers, providing an all-round positive customer experience.

The public retail postal network plays a role in representing a respected federal institution to the Canadian public, in providing a stable infrastructure that communities need to thrive and businesses need to grow.

In terms of labour relations, Canada Post has taken a cynical tack in dealing with its workers over the past 11 years as it tries to dismantle the service in a very negative way, dragging down the morale of workers, taking away the tools of their work, cutting staff, closing plants and retail offices, and cutting services such as door-to-door delivery. This makes for a very demoralized workforce.

Many of us have been postal workers for decades. Management actions have us all swimming upstream. The service under the Canada Post Corporation Act is provided from coast to coast, to every Canadian, even the most remote. The post office needs a positive agenda to move things forward with expanded services, some of which will be mentioned later today, such as postal banking, nutrition north, or grocery delivery. The post office connects communities, people, our country, face to face, unlike any other entity we know of.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much, Ms. Johnson.

Mr. Lewenza, please, for five minutes.

[Ken Lewenza, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I'm the vice-president of the Windsor and District Labour Council. I'm also a part of an organization in Windsor-Essex called Making Waves Windsor Essex. Some of our focus has been to really have a conversation about what's happening in terms of the undermining of our jobs, our democracy, and our public services, and in terms of our health, our relationships with one another, and even what the future looks like for future generations and how we move forward.

Long before any discussion at all about postal banking, I can say that I was active in my community in fighting against predatory lenders in terms of what that meant for the most marginalized people in our community, what that meant for people who were on social services and had to go to a predatory lender just to cash their cheque. It cost them $30 just to cash their cheque. We were actively involved in that, so I think this is a really neat and innovative thing that needs to be looked at.

In relation to that, I have a bit of history too. I was a city councillor for seven years. From that perspective, I can speak to a couple of interesting points that I think you would like to hear. I also come out of Unifor. My father was the president of the former CAW. On your comments around labour, I'd like to share some innovative ways in terms of how you can overcome some of the impasse that I heard you mention earlier.

If I had more time, I'd like to share with this committee two of the best success stories in our community. They come from the innovative thinking of different stakeholders that you would never expect to come together in a non-divisive way in order to think about how we can work together and collaborate better.

I'd like to tell you about two of those stories. One is in manufacturing, and one relates to a benefits company. We're working on another innovative project in our community that starts to address many complex questions and allows many stakeholders to see the benefits of collaboration.

One point I want to make is that Canada Post is a success story. If Canada Post disappeared today, imagine what the consequences would be for the Canadian population and for all of the spinoff benefits that I'm sure you're going to hear about through the various presentations when you go throughout the country. I won't speak to that today.

When I think of how governments today are trying to create jobs in communities, here's an excellent example. Just here in Windsor and Essex County, at a time when we're bleeding jobs, Canada Post provides 500 jobs in our community. They are well-paid jobs with spinoffs for our community that even go beyond the public service.

On the whole question about public and private, I always find it interesting in our country that suggesting that the public sector start going into new business is like trampling on business, but somehow business can always put forward lobbyists, think tanks, and everything on why they should be delivering public services.

I'm curious about this. When you talk about innovation, everyone says that we need change. Sure, we need change, but that change can't always be tilted in one direction in terms of who benefits and who doesn't. In this country, we all see the growing gaps in political and economic inequality. The question is, how does that conversation start to tilt back to where we can actually use government to think about how it can benefit the widest interests of citizens? Why is it that when we have profitable entities, things that have a success story, they're under attack?

I want to comment quickly on democracy, and again, I will say congratulations and thank you for hosting this event. I want to share this with you. Today when I walked in I saw my neighbour from across the street who's going to be speaking to you later on disability issues. I love coming in and listening to Gary's comments. I don't even know who else is going to be in today, but it would have been ideal for the people who made presentations today to have more time from our community perspective to put forward recommendations whereby we can learn from one another.

We all come from these little narrow perspectives that you hear from. I guess if we were going to have true meaningful engagement, what we would have is our community having the opportunity to put forward some suggestions that come from all of us on things that we agreed on and that actually tackled some of the very difficult questions. Today, we're hearing this divisiveness on all sides, whether it's management, whether it's political, or whether it's union. We need to start thinking of new ways that communities can advance ideas.

Before I leave here today, I'm going to ask you to please consider if somebody can facilitate a conversation where our community can come together—the people who presented here today—to actually have a conversation, and then I would invite you back to Windsor. I can assure you, before you submit your final report, that we can certainly submit some ideas and come up with some things that we have consensus on that I hope would make a difference.

Lastly, when I heard someone say earlier that it's not performing, that Canada Post has some challenges, I say, to what standard are we setting that opinion on?

Again, I look forward to answering some questions and giving some examples on how collaboration can put forward truly meaningful results for the public, for our country, and our future.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you so much. I appreciate those comments.

We will now start with our seven-minute round of questions and answers.

Mr. Ayoub, you have seven minutes.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all three of you for being here today. I greatly appreciate your determination. Your presence here speaks volumes.

I really liked Mr. Lewenza's comments. The message I got from it is one of hope. You came here with hope. You expect the members of the committee to be open to your comments and to eventually come up with some solutions. There's nothing perfect in this world, but at least there's a consultation. We are here to listen and hear your concerns. This seems very positive to me. We are trying to do the best possible to achieve a pan-Canadian picture of the situation. This has never been done before with Canada Post. Still, you consider this institution a success, and its history spans 100 of the past 150 years. However, a company that grows must eventually re-energize itself and sometimes take one step back so that it can take two steps forward.

I was saying earlier that we have to plan the Canada Post Corporation of the future. To help us with this, I will address my questions to the union representatives.

Earlier, some of your colleagues showed some openness and proposed offering parcel delivery on Saturday and maybe Sunday. That would be an improvement.

Do you think it would be possible to reduce the number of days of delivery during the week to two or three days, and to work Saturday and Sunday? Is the union open to that idea?

Fewer letters are being sent. Letter mail has decreased significantly. How flexible are you on this?

[Michelle Gouthro Johnson]

We currently have a tentative agreement with Canada Post, and we have agreed to be able to use part-timers and temporary workers on the weekends. In the past few years, Thanksgiving is when we start to see the parcel business towards Christmas explode, by hundreds of per cent. Even in Windsor, a small city, there have been millions of parcels. We're open to that. People who are hired currently are hired at a lesser rate; that's happened since 2011. The idea about alternate-day delivery doesn't make sense in a carbon footprint kind of way. There may be parcels going to a house on a Thursday, and unless you're changing your delivery standards, they're not getting letter mail that day. Say, they have letter mail on a Thursday, but that's not a delivery day; they're also not going to get their parcel on that day. For the five-day or the seven-day delivery, I think they're looking at evenings, and actually they're looking at Sundays as opposed to Saturdays. Right now, when you get a parcel delivered to your door, you're at work, so you get a card and you have to go to a postal outlet to pick up your parcel. They think they can increase deliverability of parcels with Sunday delivery because people are home.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

How do you think Canada Post will remain competitive when some studies indicate that employee salaries and benefits are 40% higher than those of the competitors?

I understand that these are very good jobs and that people want to keep them. You also said that Canada Post recruits employees that it pays less to do some of the work. So there is an imbalance in how to address the situation.

What is your opinion on this?

[Michelle Gouthro Johnson]

I've been at Canada Post for a very long time, over 30 years, and the idea that we are overpaid has kind of dwindled over the years.

Granted, I challenge anyone here to make $19 an hour as a temp employee—your trainer tells you not to quit your day job to deliver parcels on Sunday for Canada Post—and you live in, say, Vancouver or Toronto and be able to support a family. We are flexible.

Our rate of pay has not kept up with inflation, I'd say in the last 15 years. I have a comparison to the auto industry. In 1984, my husband at the time was hired at Chrysler Corporation. There was about 60 cents difference in our hourly rates. Currently, an auto worker in Windsor makes about $7 an hour more than we do, and that's at our top rate.

So, we are flexible. I am a retail clerk. I am all about public service. I believe that every customer I have should be given dignity and respect.

We are dealing with challenging times. People who use the post office may be disadvantaged financially, or may be from other countries and have difficulty speaking in one of the two official languages that we use in our post office. We work very hard to serve those people.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you.

I have question about confidence.

You just signed a new collective agreement for the next two years. As part of the negotiations, decisions were made without consultation and without informing you. Even still, I'm hearing that you aren't getting information on certain issues.

How much do you trust the senior management regarding the negotiations that would allow you to see a future with Canada Post?

[Michelle Gouthro Johnson]

I think most of us, unless you're reading Facebook, have faith in our national negotiating committee. We have had something like 85 bulletins since July 2.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McCauley, seven minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Good morning. Thanks for joining us. That was well spoken.

Mr. Lewenza, I will get to you and you can share some of your ideas, but I'm short of time, so I'll ask witnesses to answer briefly.

On the issue of revenue at Canada Post with the door-to-door delivery, we've seen the stats that the revenue is dropping.

Do you accept Canada Post's long-term projection of the dropping of that revenue from the door-to-door? The reason I ask is that we're hearing some commentary, almost a conspiracy theory, that Mr. Chopra is causing the drop in door-to-door mail by different actions. I believe it's because people just aren't mailing the letters like they were before. They're e-billing.

Do you accept that it is dropping and that we need to change?

[Michelle Gouthro Johnson]

I think nationally we have to accept that mail has dropped.

However, there is other mail that has increased, such as addressed ad mail, which is mail to the occupant. It's addressed. It goes to your address.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

But not enough to offset—