I've been there for 42 years, so I've been through a few strikes and I've seen a lot of things change. Why does Canada Post have 22 vice-presidents who are being paid as much as they are? Why does it have a president who's being paid as much as he is? Why did it build brand new buildings in Winnipeg and Vancouver if mail volumes are dropping? Why did it go with all that brand new equipment? Why did it put a machine into Thunder Bay again? There was one there before, and they didn't have enough volume then—and that's when there was mail to keep it running—but no, Canada Post took one out of Ottawa and put it into Thunder Bay. Then it took all of our mail and delayed our mail going out. Canada Post delayed it by two to 10 business days instead of leaving it to be sorted locally and support jobs.
When I first started at the post office, I was making a dollar an hour more than the guys at the mill. I'm now making less than half of what they're making, but I'm still employed, while 600 of them were put out of jobs. They had to go elsewhere, my brothers included. Why? All for the sake of a dollar, because Canada Post wants to make more money.
Again, it is making money. It made money in the first quarter. Why does it make money? It's because it didn't follow the Canada Post Corporation Act and give customers six months' advance notice that it was going to be increasing the price of stamps. It yanked the stamps off the walls and said that those stamps could not be sold because the price was going to increase overnight.
Why did Canada Post take the publication rate away from the small newspapers? There was nothing wrong with that. That was a subsidy. Maybe that subsidy came through the government—I'm not exactly sure—but it helped the small businesses. It helped the small newspapers. Where are they now? They're paying full price, and that's not right.
I was also really upset when I heard you weren't going to Sandy Lake. That's a shame, because you need to know what it's like in northwestern Ontario. You can't even drive there; you have to fly. There are a whole lot more things going on, and dealing with some place an hour out of Winnipeg, although it's still a drive, is not the same thing.
There's a whole lot more I could say.