Thank you all for coming today.
I only have five minutes and I'm going to try to ask you to please keep your responses short. I have a bunch of questions I've been mulling over here.
I'll start by saying that I'm glad to hear that at least half of you and your organizations were able to participate in the previous Canada Post consultations and were informed on how their business processes were going.
Maybe what I'll start with mentioning is something that Ms. Ratansi mentioned before on postal banking. I'll start with Mr. Brigley.
Using the Indian example to capitalize the bank, it took half a billion dollars put in by the Government of India just to capitalize the bank. What we're trying to do here, or what we're supposed to look at, is the long-term sustainability of Canada Post, and we have a shortfall of $700 million by 2026. How will we resolve that? To capitalize the bank in order for it to be able to take deposits and make out loans, they need a float. How would we make that work, on top of all that I mentioned before to the previous intervenors who came here, with the problem of training, setting up the logistics, and setting up the software systems? We're trying to ensure long-term sustainability, but it sounds as though this would be a large investment into Canada Post that may not bear the return that we need.