Government Operations Committee on Oct. 4th, 2016

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

The bodies aren't still there. It's just through attrition. Okay.

Mr. Keefe, you mentioned, from the B.C. report, 4,800 incidents. Was that from home boxes or from existing CMBs?

[Michael Keefe]

That was from existing CMBs.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Are you aware of an issue here in Halifax that they're getting broken into?

[Michael Keefe]

Yes, there is. Again, there are exhibits in my testimony. I've received a photograph from a member who was out in Portland Estates, looking at Christmas lights with his family, and there was a box that was broken into. He took a picture and sent it to me. Then last year in Hammonds Plains and Lucasville, just outside of Bedford, there were a rash of break-ins into community mailboxes there as well.

It's an issue that happens right across this country. Unfortunately, it takes freedom of information requests from news outlets in order to get the full information out there, which is one of the reasons that I suggested this committee should look at the larger picture of how much of an issue, or how little of an issue, it is across Canada.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mail sorting comes up a lot. I understand Canada Post is going very soon to something like FedEx, which ships everything to one location. In theory, it's a bit silly when you think it gets picked up in Halifax, goes to Sydney, and goes to the States for sorting, but obviously there's a reason for these efficiencies. You talked about it.

Are you suggesting we go back to the old way, whereby every city sorts its own?

[Jeffrey Callaghan]

Yes. We think it provided a much better service for residents to do their mail. If I'm mailing a letter in Halifax—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

The only question I have for that is this. This survey that has been done is quite extensive. It has shown that the number one concern of Canadians is reliability. A day or two later, etc., is not an urgent matter. Things have changed; let's be honest. We're not sitting waiting for Christmas cards from grandma. We're waiting for this and that later, but they're saying that reliability is the first thing. Two or three days later is not as important as it used to be.

Do you agree with that?

[Jeffrey Callaghan]

No, I don't agree with that. The Canadians and the owners of small and medium-sized businesses I've talked to say that reliability is important, but speed is every bit as important. When we're seeing mail that's taking upwards of a week to two weeks to be delivered, and it's a letter mailed across the street or across the town, that's unacceptable. That's when Canadians in those communities are looking for other alternatives, and they're turning to FedEx and those types of services to get their—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Are they FedExing individual letters?

[Jeffrey Callaghan]

We're talking about invoices and important documents—documents from a lawyer's office, for example. That's the incident I'm thinking about right now. We received a letter from a lawyer's office in the Miramichi. Sending important documents across town took eight days.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Are you suggesting the lawyer who is sending important documents by stamp mail would be the lawyer you would choose?

[Jeffrey Callaghan]

You would be surprised that it was in the mail system.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I would be.

I'll go on to some of the surveys we've been doing.

If we could have our choice, yes, all Canadians would like to have door-to-door delivery, but that's not the reality, and it won't be the reality. They're saying very clearly that they don't want to pay more for stamps and they don't want to pay higher taxes either. Canadians do not want to subsidize Canada Post.

Where do you see it going? Postal banking might be off the table. I'm not sure that's a feasible thing, especially when you look at the small communities where it might happen. There's not a lot of revenue that's going to generate a profit. What do you see, going forward, for Canada Post, when Canadians are saying no to higher taxes to subsidize them and no to higher stamp prices?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Please answer very briefly, Mr. Callaghan.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Do you see a solution where we can continue with CMBs, or in your view or from CUPW's, is that not an option at this time?

[Jeffrey Callaghan]

Canada Post has been a successful crown corporation making profits year after year since the 1990s, and we think that will continue going forward. However, Canada Post has to look at expanding services. They can't continue to navel-gaze. Postal administrations around the world are facing exactly the same problems as Canada Post, but they're looking at other solutions.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Excellent. There's privatization, though.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you. Unfortunately, you're well over time, Mr. McCauley.

We'll have our final invention of five minutes.

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

Thank you all for being here.

I am interested in a few things. One is the footprint, the carbon footprint. You suggested that the change that Canada Post has made in reducing door-to-door delivery and making people go to community mailboxes is one way in which they're increasing our fossil fuel consumption and therefore increasing the carbon footprint. Am I right in assuming that?

[Danny Cavanagh]

Yes. From things as I understand them, when you put more fleet on the road and you have fewer people on foot, that naturally increases your carbon footprint.

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

Fair enough. Do you deal with rural areas? If so, do you know if there are many community hubs that communities could use for the suggestions you've made about charging stations, etc.?

[Danny Cavanagh]

I think the suggestion was that charging stations could be at the actual post offices that are in those communities now, the same as those buildings could be part of the banking system and many other kinds of things. Almost every rural community in this province has a post office in the community now.

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

Fair enough.

Mr. Callaghan, I'm just following through with what Mr. McCauley said. When we were listening to businesses, they spoke of timeliness and efficiency in service. From your presentation—and we've heard from others—the initiatives that Canada Post brought in have created more inefficiency in a crisis than efficiency.

Do you think that changing back to your postal office not sending mail from here to Toronto and then back in Windsor and then sending it across would reinstate the timeliness? There are some initiatives that appear to create a crisis where none should exist.

[Jeffrey Callaghan]

Yes, I think we're talking about restoring local processing of the mail that's to stay in the community. In the case of mail that's mailed in Halifax for Toronto, yes, it makes sense to go to a larger sorting station. That's going to go across the country. We're talking about mail that's for the community or the surrounding communities. Canada Post refers to them as DCFs. It should be restored back to the local post office to do that sorting, because it doesn't make any sense to put a letter on a truck to send it 1,000 kilometres away to be processed, only to come back again and be delivered the next day. It makes absolutely no sense.

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

Our job here is to think outside the box and create solutions outside the box. Would you be able to work with management? There seems to be tension. Is it possible that if management sits down and listens to you, you would be able to work with them?