I'm going to be less economical. I have a statement here that I'm going to read.
My names is Brad Pareis. I'm a letter carrier with Canada Post as well as an officer in my local union, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. In more than 22 years of service with Canada Post, I have worked in five provinces, nine cities, and many depots.
Today I'd like to reflect briefly on the working paper entitled “Canada Post in the Digital Age”. It appears that the model of the study paper is largely built upon reductions for savings as opposed to additions for profits. I believe the public doesn't need a service that mimics FedEx, UPS, or DHL, but rather a post office with a broader scope. What such a post office delivers are things urgently needed by smaller communities across Canada: jobs and services.
Well-paying jobs with pensions return money to small communities during an employee's working years and after retirement. Indeed, the middle class is built upon such jobs. Services help to retain people within these small communities and to strengthen them, reducing out-migration and increasing livability. To attain these goals, Canada Post must be conceptualized in a different way than has been done recently—as a truly public service with the good of the people of Canada at the forefront.
The task force identified some options that it did not quantify, and some of these are worth investigating at length, beginning with Canada Post's governance.
It's a crown corporation, with a mandate to provide affordable, universal public postal service, but it's also a company saddled with a CEO from the private sector and 22 vice-presidents in a top-heavy structure that seeks to reduce the size and compensation of its workforce and service to the public. It's something like a Frankensteinian monster.
The postal service is de facto being run as if it were a for-profit private corporation, and jobs and service are being adversely affected. A radical restructuring of the upper management scheme of the corporation could result in millions of dollars of savings and a new approach to delivering services.
Conversely, labour costs are congruent with a public service that returns money to the Canadian economy and not to foreign ownership à la FedEx, DHL, etc. The supposed pension deficit is, however, a red herring that causes undue panic in uninformed members of the public. Mr. Wilson might be one example. This test is not an indicator of the plan's health, as the surplus in the plan's going-concern column is. The pension plan's long-term viability would be solidified by avoiding a large reduction in the labour force currently employed at CPC. Considering the delivery efficiencies found—there's more on that below—this means more employment at CPC in non-collection and non-delivery functions, such as postal banking.
In CPC's self-commissioned report, postal banking was seen as a win-win, but this same report was subsequently buried. Numerous other postal administrations are able to use successful postal banking businesses to cross-subsidize their delivery services and enable them to provide universal service.
Certainly it fills a social need, especially in the far north and in small communities either abandoned or never served by the big banks. Healthy competition in the banking sector would also result in reduced user fees for the Canadian public, and a postal bank would surely provide paper statements free of charge.
Postal banking ties in with the concept of Canada Post's becoming community hubs, as do other ideas, such as contracting in of streamlined delivery effected by electric or hybrid purpose-designed delivery vehicles optimized for Canadian conditions. Charging stations situated at post offices could serve these vehicles as well as those of the general public. A post office with longer operating hours and Saturday opening no longer needs the backup of a retail postal outlet and thus also sheds hours in preparation and depot transfers between offices. Efficiency is gained through centralization and having all functions under one roof.
For true delivery efficiency, the motorized mail courier concept should be embraced—that is, a motorized delivery agent should perform all the duties of local collection and delivery, including delivery of all parcels, courier items, letter mail, flyers, and street letter box collection. The delivery pattern would remain door to door for this type of service, which is preferred by the vast majority of the public.
Significant investment in the motorization of all delivery personnel would open new possibilities in service delivery. The report mentions the delivery of legalized marijuana. This would add to the pilot project by the LCBO to deliver alcohol to Ontario addresses, although not necessarily to dry reserves. This service could be adopted by other provinces and territories and could be rounded out by services such as last-mile delivery of other courier companies' product and on-demand pickups by delivery agents within a prescribed geographic area.
The embrace of increased job and service possibilities could become the hallmark of Canada Post in the digital age, where the physical delivery of services is still a profitable necessity.
Thank you for bearing with me.