Government Operations Committee on Sept. 28th, 2016

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for coming this morning so early to give us your thoughts on how the future of Canada Post can be improved.

We've heard from a lot of different witnesses who have taken a lot of different approaches. Some agree with the task force that the best way to manage the future is to contract costs, contract service, and try to deliver the service in different ways, such as partner and franchise.

We've also heard from people who say we need to grow, expand, improve the level and quality of service, and recognize the role of Canada Post as part of the e-commerce infrastructure of the country so that new and emerging businesses have access to customers in the country on the same basis that Americans have access to our customers or Americans have access to their own customers.

My first question would be for Ms. Sitlington. You've mentioned postal banking. We've heard an awful lot from people telling us that they don't want to see Canada Post enter into new lines of business where they don't have expertise and don't want Canada Post to compete with businesses that already exist in the markets because government doesn't have a good track record in entering new lines of business or competing with industry.

Could you comment on that for us, please?

President, Canadian Union of Postal Workers

There is that side of it, devil's advocate, yes. There is that side of it where Canada Post does not have any expertise in banking. That ceased in 1968, and I don't think those people are around anymore, so it would have to start from scratch, yes.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

And sort of capitalize on the market opportunity to subsidize other services.

President, Canadian Union of Postal Workers

Yes, yes, subsidize, capitalize, yes.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

As someone who works on the front lines and has members who work on the front lines in the postal service, can you provide us with some examples where Canada Post has eroded its service levels? Service to customers in all the businesses that I've been involved with is king. You really want to prevent churn and prevent people from leaving your products. It seems that, over the past number of years, there have been a lot of disruptions that have encouraged people, perhaps not unnecessarily but certainly more rapidly, to drop their letter mail service or move to couriers.

Could you talk about some of the service disruptions that you've seen or ways in which the corporation has not a client-first agenda?

President, Canadian Union of Postal Workers

Yes, even with this last ending of our contract, Canada Post was in negotiations with CUPW, and Canada Post pushed that button a lot sooner and was telling large mailers that there was going to be a strike, so we did see a decline early in parcels and letter mail.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

In your view, they unnecessarily disrupted their own revenue stream.

President, Canadian Union of Postal Workers

Yes, they did. They unnecessarily did, because CUPW's Mike Palesek told the country that we were not going to... Yes, we did have a strike mandate, but we were not going to push it forward.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

In your view, the crisis and the loss of revenues for Canada Post weren't part of the union agenda. The union wanted to maintain the revenues, maintain profitability, and believe in the company, while the corporation was doing what it could to thwart revenues and make the company look like it was in a worse financial position than it is.

Would you agree?

President, Canadian Union of Postal Workers

Yes, I do. Canada Post generated its own decline in business.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

Mr. Sutherland, what are the opportunities for Canada Post? As someone who lives in a community that must be growing if you've moved from post service to resident municipal address service, which is great to hear, what types of other services do you think your community would appreciate having at its postal outlets, or what other services might they be able to receive from Canada Post?

Business Owner, Petrolia, Ontario, As an Individual

I think just doing their usual business and doing it well. The package business is the one that's really moving ahead. I don't know if you're familiar with the system but, basically, I go to my box—I can go on the weekend—in the post office. I open it up and there's a key there and the key has a number. I go to another large box and it has my parcel, so I can pick up a parcel on Saturday or Sunday. It's a good system. As far as my knowledge of the actual sorting system, it's more efficient. There's a little bit of a learning curve, but it's all going to get better.

To be specific, I did refer to that community aspect of a post office in a rural community because we lost our community bulletin board. Everybody would come every day—in fact, I helped to look after it—to a table to search your mail, but the philosophy, apparently, at Canada Post is that they don't want any papers or any garbage or anything, so they removed the garbage pails. There is no recycling. You're supposed to take your mail out the door and take it home.

That doesn't work. You'll find it now on the floor or up on the window counter. That is a small aspect, but it's not so small when you think of small communities and it being a community centre. If we could have our bulletin board back and our table, we'd be happy.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

Mr. Sutherland, it sounds very strange. Who do you think is responsible for these changes, and why would they do something that I would see as quite anti-social?

Business Owner, Petrolia, Ontario, As an Individual

I think Canada Post, out of the London office, has passed the word down to our municipal people that it's not a policy to allow bulletin boards in post offices.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

They're defeating the purpose. They're actually making it an anti-hub. They want people to spend as little time in the hub as possible.

Business Owner, Petrolia, Ontario, As an Individual

Exactly. That's the only place I meet my friends—or maybe sometimes at the grocery store—but I look forward to meeting people at the post office.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

Mr. Sutherland, who do you think is driving this agenda? Is this being driven by the union? Is it being driven by management?

Business Owner, Petrolia, Ontario, As an Individual

I would have to say that it's management, only insofar as they're the spokespeople that we contacted to find out. They did promise, after we had a meeting in Petrolia, that they would look into it. But that was last May and nothing has happened.

Liberal

Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL

Ms. Sitlington, is your membership in favour or not in favour of having recycle containers at the locations and having community services at the locations?

President, Canadian Union of Postal Workers

We are in favour of having recycle bins. We are in favour of having garbage pails. We are in favour of having tables and bulletin boards, because that's what Canada Post is. Canada Post should be the pulse of any town, city, village, wherever it is.