Evidence of meeting #33 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was mail.
Deputy Mayor, Municipality of Red Lake
The other thing to remember is that in a small community—and it's probably the same in Dryden—the folks working in that post office are your friends and neighbours as well. It's not unlike what Drew mentioned. It takes me at least half an hour to go to the post office and pick up a letter.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Fair enough.
We've heard from businesses that say they want expanded service because they want to be able to reach their customers in the way that customers expect to be reached. Customers might not receive mail every day, and they don't mind if they don't get mail delivered every day, but in terms of the time at which you place an order for a parcel, for instance, until the time you receive it, do you have any thoughts on whether that should be cut in half or doubled?
Deputy Mayor, Municipality of Red Lake
Again, I would suspect that when you talk about “half”, you're talking mostly about delivery. That doesn't affect us, because we pick it up at the post office.
We get a little card in our mailbox that says we have a parcel, we talk to the nice lady at the counter, and she gets the parcel for us. As far as delivery goes, I get very little, but I can always tell when my wife hasn't had a good night's sleep, because when I get up in the morning the home shopping channel is on, and usually about four days later I have a parcel in the mail, so actually, to my way of thinking, they're pretty darned quick.
Deputy Mayor, Municipality of Red Lake
For businesses, it may be a different situation. They may need something tomorrow, but that's not always possible.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Okay. Fair enough.
Now, maybe to correct the views of Mr. Wilson, we're not the task force. We're the parliamentary committee that's looking at the task force. The task force had a more constrained view on what they were required to do. They were looking at Canada Post from a self-sustaining manner, but we're open to doing other things.
I just want to confirm that your view is that we should take that road: that we should not increase service levels or taxes and we should find a way to counteract the loss of 190 million pieces of mail every year or whatever it is. Every year we should be cutting $190 million out of mail, and if we have a growth of 90 million in parcels, then that's how much we can grow. Is that right?
Mayor, City of Dryden
Yes. It seems obvious to me that the system is not sustainable the way it is. It has to change. When you have a high cost of delivery and you can't compete on a sustainable level, something has to change. You have to change something. You either get more sales or you cut your costs, right?
The study showed that the costs for delivering the mail could be a lot lower, and they're not. I believe it's because of politics. It's something on which somebody has to take a stand and say, “Look, we can't keep going this way.”
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Fair enough.
You're talking about the cost of labour, I'm assuming. We're looking at this from the perspective of how these are 60,000 good middle-class jobs. These people can send their kids away to university, they can own a house, and they can drive cars. They can do all these things and participate in the economy in the normal way. If we're going to say that their communities no longer have these jobs, how is that going to trickle down through the rest of the local economies? I find it very surprising that local small-town mayors are saying, “Cut these jobs. My community doesn't want these jobs.” That's what I don't understand.
Mayor, City of Dryden
The post office's responsibility is to deliver the mail. Our concern is that we get the mail. Our concern, as mayors, as leaders of our communities, is to make sure that those who cannot get access to mail in an altered way from the standard, from the norm, that we're living, are looked after. That's our main concern. That's the elderly and so on. We have an aging population in Dryden, a higher average age than most communities. It's not by much—I think it's by about four or five years—but they will have mobility problems. We have to deal with that. You could cut $650 million out of the delivery model and people would still get their mail. Those who can't, those who don't have the ability to actually—
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
I'm sorry; I think what the task force says is that we can cut another $320 million, and that's the upper end, if we converted all of the rest of the home delivery across the country to—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
We're going to have to end that portion of the discussion.
Hopefully, Mayor Wilson, you will have a chance to expand upon your answers in the next intervention.
We'll go now to Mr. McCauley for seven minutes.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Gentlemen, it's great to be here. Thanks very much for taking time out of your day. I appreciate everything you've said. I don't think your reality reflects, unfortunately, the narrative that some of my colleagues are trying to build here.
I assume that you're in business. Can I ask what you do?
Mayor, City of Dryden
Being the mayor doesn't pay enough, so I have another job. I'm not sure which is the day job or the night job. We have a stationery business and a furniture and equipment business. We're as far away in Timmins and we're in Manitoba.
Conservative
Conservative
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay.
Mr. Middleton, yours is purely post office. Are they the corporate ones, or do you have any in a pharmacy or anything?
Deputy Mayor, Municipality of Red Lake
No, ours are all corporate, and the mailboxes are in Cochenour and McKenzie Island, two small communities.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Is it just McKenzie Island that's not accessible year round?
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Chief Bull, thanks for joining us.
You mentioned a road being built. Are all the various communities you mentioned, such as Whitefish Bay and Canoe River, accessible now year round?
Chief, Lac Seul First Nation
Just Canoe River. There used to be a lot of people there, but there are only two people now. However, the other three communities all have road access. What I've been finding is that a lot of the people in a northern community who receive a one-time delivery on Wednesdays are going to Hudson, which is a half-hour away, and getting mailboxes set up there. That increases their postal service delivery.