Government Operations Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2016

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

That's the point I want to make. Sometimes people don't want to stay home. They want to go out. They don't want to be considered invalids. They want to be free to walk. They don't want to stay home. Maybe they want to go to the post office. That's the kind of point I want to make.

How many more minutes do I have? One minute?

Thank you.

You talked about asking family members or friends for help. Asking strangers for help isn't a solution.

There's a question that sometimes comes up when people talk outside a committee such as this one.

They wonder how individuals with a particular disability do their groceries. How do they function on a daily basis? What's the difference between asking someone for help to do your groceries, let's say, and asking someone for help to get your mail? Is there a difference? And if so, what is it?

[Emily Christy]

I'll answer that question.

I think it has to do with privacy.

If you have a caregiver or personal home support worker, you don't care if they're helping you to pick out bananas, but you might care if they're fiddling through your cheques and your personal information. When it comes to having someone drive you to the grocery store versus looking at very personal things in your mailbox, I think there is a level there that does put—

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

But the letters are not opened. Do they open the letters?

[Emily Christy]

They're not opened.

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

Okay.

[Emily Christy]

Of course, mail fraud is a very serious offence, but if someone has access to your mail, there's still the possibility that people can steal letters that you didn't know were there or misplace letters that you didn't know had arrived.

I think the other piece is that people with disabilities have funding for a certain amount of hours for home support workers. Those are very precious hours in the day, where they're helping you get your meals ready or helping you clean up your house in certain areas that you can't do yourself, but maybe you can—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I think we'll have to stop it there, if you wouldn't mind.

We are now going to our final two interventions, for five minutes each.

We have Mr. Kmiec, please.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Thank you all for coming.

I won't go into postal banking again because you probably heard me talk about that with the previous two witnesses.

What I do want to talk about is something that came up in Corner Brook, this theft of mail in homes or at the boxes. Is this common? Do you have any statistics on how often theft of letters or parcels happens, either at a person's residence or at their CMB, their community mailbox?

[Kimberly Yetman Dawson]

We haven't had feedback in regard to theft. We have had feedback in regard to delay in getting your mail. If you're having a support worker get it for you, or a family member, I think people put more emphasis on the need for food and money than they do on the postal service. If someone's going to get you food, he or she will bring the food to you right away. but if they're going to get your mail, they'll let it sit around for a few days.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Okay. I think one of you had mentioned that theft was a concern for seniors, especially when having to go down to their CMB. They're worried that someone might steal from this community mailbox.

For those who have door-to-door delivery...forgive me; I don't know about this. I used to live in Montreal where we had postal delivery to the home, but nobody there ever had one of those locked mailboxes at their door, the ones you can put a lock on. Anybody could just walk up to it and take the mail right out. Nobody was around during the day. They were out at school or out working, and this would happen.

Is that common here? Do people have locks? No?

[Kimberly Yetman Dawson]

The only people who I can think of who have locks are those who use the community mailboxes or live in apartment buildings.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I'll give you an example from one of my communities. It's Douglas Glen. It has community mailboxes in a very highly lit area in the middle of a kids' park. It's covered. It has a roof on top of it and it has recycling bins in it. When the community was built, it was built with this in mind, and since then the community association has continuously tried to improve it. If you had a better relationship directly with Canada Post, would these roofs be something your communities could work on having? That way you wouldn't have ice on the mailboxes. I fully hear that seniors don't want to go up there, tippytoe to try to get in, and slip and fall.

I have a community mailbox right near my house, and I won't even go out on some days because it's full of ice, because there's a slough around the side and all the water comes out. It's Calgary, so everything melts every two days, and then there's more snow, and then everything melts. It's a cycle.

If you had a working relationship among your members, the city, and Canada Post to basically work out the best location, maybe in an area where the city would be willing to pay an extra thousand dollars to put a roof on top of it, would that make it easier to adopt CMBs in certain communities?

[Sharron Callahan]

Anything is an improvement, and all improvements would be welcome.

There was consultation in the beginning when community mailboxes were coming out. People received questionnaires and things like that, and points were made about why certain locations might not be suitable for one reason or another, but it seems sometimes those recommendations fell on deaf ears.

If there is a way to cement the recommendations and make them happen for the positive, of course....

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I've probably gone through every single committee transcript, because I joined this committee later, and a recurring theme was this concern about theft, again, at the mailboxes, or persons being unable to get their mail on time. On this theft component, people say there are falls, there are thefts, there are accidents, but there's very little data. None of us really knows what the accident rate or what the theft rate is per 100,000 visits to community mailboxes.

Is that information your organizations would be able to help this committee collect, through CARP or other national organizations?

[Sharron Callahan]

It's possible that CARP could undertake some kind of a poll of its members. I'm just throwing that out there. I haven't had the discussion, To my knowledge, there isn't that data, other than anecdotes.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I have maybe one last question, again, on this Criminal Code thing. Would you support an increase to the penalty for stealing someone's mail, or a senior's mail? That came up in the last election. Crimes that target seniors specifically should maybe be treated differently, because they're a growing demographic in our population. They may require further protection, especially in the Criminal Code, and that would dissuade criminal acts targeting seniors, such as attacks, identity theft....

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Please give a very short answer if you could. We're out of time now.

[Sharron Callahan]

Of course.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Our final intervenor will be Madam Ratansi.

You have five minutes, please.

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

Thank you all for coming and staying late for this.

I think I want to clarify something. Are you saying you don't want any privatization of Canada Post? That was a theme we heard, but maybe there's a misunderstanding that Canada Post was not going to be privatized. Canada Post did say it consulted 46 communities and came up with a five-point plan. Maybe there's that confusion, and that is why, during the election, we put a moratorium on it.

You talked about partnering with living centres, etc. Were you or your organization ever consulted for your opinion on whether it would be damaging to your organization or to your community if community mailboxes came?

[Kimberly Yetman Dawson]

No.

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

No. Okay.

How about you, Ms. Christy?

[Emily Christy]

We were never consulted.

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

You were never consulted.

[Kimberly Yetman Dawson]

No. We were never consulted.