—or what else else they could offer?
Evidence of meeting #38 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was business.
Evidence of meeting #38 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was business.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
11:20 a.m.
Director of Sales, Marketing and Development, Vesey's Seeds Ltd.
I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what they could be doing, but—
11:20 a.m.
Director of Sales, Marketing and Development, Vesey's Seeds Ltd.
The FedEx SmartPost is probably the one that would affect us the most, and the one where we would probably offer a rather major change to one of our core business components.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Do you chat with other like businesses across Canada? I know Canada Post has consulted you a lot because you're such a large customer.
Have you chatted with other associations or other like businesses about how we can improve service?
11:20 a.m.
Director of Sales, Marketing and Development, Vesey's Seeds Ltd.
Yes, it's interesting. I guess maybe because it's gardening and we're all a little folksy or something, but we're actually very good friends with all of our competitors, both in Canada and the U.S.
That subject comes up all the time. You know, everybody has their frustrations, and it always starts with price.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
That's one of the things that has come up.
We've heard, “Our business is open to a higher stamp price.” However, the surveys and polling we've done says letter mail businesses don't want to pay higher stamp prices. They also don't want higher taxes to subsidize or to offset that.
Are you in the same boat, or would you pay a higher—
11:20 a.m.
Director of Sales, Marketing and Development, Vesey's Seeds Ltd.
The answer is not increasing prices. The answer is running the company more efficiently.
11:20 a.m.
Director of Sales, Marketing and Development, Vesey's Seeds Ltd.
If it takes closing rural post offices, implementing community mail boxes, further mechanization of processing the mail, that's what needs to be done.
Eventually, you'll price yourself out of the market. Canada Post has come very close a couple of times to pricing themselves out of the market with us, particularly when the guys at UPS are drooling over the account and they're doing whatever they can to get that business.
It's a very fine line as to when all of a sudden that extra cost becomes critical. I mean, we're subject to price increases, and I don't know of another supplier who does this. We're subject to automatic price increases annually. It's guaranteed. It's the single most guaranteed item in our entire business.
11:20 a.m.
Director of Sales, Marketing and Development, Vesey's Seeds Ltd.
Every year, within the first or second week of January, addressed admail is going to take a hike, and there's nothing we can do about it.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Right.
I have one quick last question.
You touched upon the summer service disruption, and I'm asking for your opinion. Previously, Canada Post was legislated back to work. This time it was just kind of let go.
If you see this as an essential service, do you think it should be subject to being legislated back to work, or should we just let things go?
11:20 a.m.
Director of Sales, Marketing and Development, Vesey's Seeds Ltd.
My understanding this time around was that while it wasn't a binding arbitration process, there was an arbiter added at the last hour, something that probably should have been done months previous. Everybody knew where everybody stood for a long, long time, and then there was no movement.
11:20 a.m.
Director of Sales, Marketing and Development, Vesey's Seeds Ltd.
I understand.
Thanks very much, and, again, thanks for having us here.
11:20 a.m.
NDP
Scott Duvall NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
Thank you, gentlemen, and thank you for your time today. I appreciate it.
Mr. Barrett, you stated that you feel it should run more efficiently, and I think we all agree with that. You also believe that there was political interference, I heard you say, and some of it was blown out of proportion when it came to the community mailboxes.
Are you aware that this went right across Canada and there was an outcry with all Canadian citizens that this was happening?
11:20 a.m.
Director of Sales, Marketing and Development, Vesey's Seeds Ltd.
Oh, yes, certainly. I mean, obviously I saw the local coverage more than I would have seen the coverage, let's say in Hamilton, but it was certainly fuelled by the media. I think the implementation of that attempted efficiency was blown out of proportion.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
Scott Duvall NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
Okay.
We heard this even yesterday from some of the politicians that have been going around and are still going door to door. I know I heard it when I was running for election, as well as a few others. This was a concern to Canadians, that we're losing their door-to-door service.
In fact, it became a platform for one party to say that we would continue with door-to-door service, because it was harming a lot of people. I wanted to mention that, because people say they still want that service.
I want to ask for your comments. Do you think it should be the people's decision, or Canada Post's decision?
11:25 a.m.
Director of Sales, Marketing and Development, Vesey's Seeds Ltd.
As Mr. MacAulay brought up today and in the previous session, people would like to have improved service, but they don't want to have to pay for it. The public's decision would be, “Yes, I like the service, but I don't want to pay for it; in fact I'm not very happy with the price of stamps right now.”
I think Canada Post is in the best position to judge what it thinks it needs to do in order to avoid this eventual billion-dollar loss that it's talking about. I think it's in a better position perhaps than Parliament, and I think it's probably in a better position than its customers.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
Scott Duvall NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
Speaking of the loss, I understand Canada Post has made profits in 20 years out of the 22. It projected losses, but made great profits of millions of dollars. How is it that in the future, all of a sudden, it's going to be making billion-dollar losses, when it hasn't shown that to be correct in the first—
11:25 a.m.
Director of Sales, Marketing and Development, Vesey's Seeds Ltd.
I think you would have to ask that of Deepak, not of me.
