Thank you.
Before I begin, I'd like to recognize that this meeting is taking place on the lands of the Mi'kmaq first nation.
Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, I'd like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak from a postal worker's point of view during this stage of your review. I have been working for the post office since 2001. In the last 15-plus years at the post office, I've seen many changes to services and a huge change in the actions of management.
For my presentation today, I wish to touch on two of the most concerning points of the current situation at the post office, namely, the effects of service changes on seniors, and the centralization of mail sorting and how this affects postal service on P.E.I.
In 2013 Deepak Chopra announced to Canadians that he would be changing the way Canadians receive their mail, and introduced draconian measures with the help of his Harper-government counterparts.
The implementation of community mailboxes began without any meaningful consultation with the public or the union. How could this happen? What would this mean for me and my co-workers? The post office isn't funded by taxpayers' dollars. It is a self-sustaining crown corporation. How could this guy lie to Canadians on CBC, telling us that he had talked to seniors and that they wanted this service? He implied that they looked forward to blizzards in January to go outside to get their mail, if only they could get into their boxes.
Not one senior I know agreed with Deepak. The percentage of the population aged 65 and over in my home community of Summerside was 18.2% in 2011, compared with the national average of 14.8%.
I have come to know many seniors and their daily habits through my personal interactions. Seniors are vulnerable to many dangers in my community during the winter season. I've had to help blind ladies on two occasions who were disoriented outside. I entered a seniors' apartment building only to smell spoke, and then alerted the residents. Their neighbours had left the stove on and a small fire had started. We contacted the residents in time to avert disaster. These are only a couple of examples of the above-and-beyond service letter carriers going door to door provide a community. Many examples happen every day across Canada. Just ask any postal worker.
In the 1980s, a pilot program was started by the Letter Carriers Union of Canada—now CUPW—the Canadian Labour Congress, and the United Way of Canada, called the letter carrier alert program. A similar program has been adopted by many countries in the world. This program works as a first step, or in a supporting role, to provide information for specialized service givers to react to the needs of seniors. I've provided more details about this system in the supporting documents for the committee.
With today's technology, the post office should be looking at expanding services, not cutting services and increasing rates. I could be going door to door, checking in on your aging parents, and immediately being in contact with you, your family, or health care providers about their needs. If the post office were properly managed we would still have postal banking, and I could provide services to seniors at the door, such as paying bills, doing money transfers, and so on. Many of the G-20 countries have postal banking. Why not Canada?
Pharmaceutical companies are some of the wealthiest companies in the world. Why not collaborate with them to create a pharmacare program that delivers medication to seniors at their door? A lot of postal outlets are located at Lawtons Drugs or Shoppers Drug Mart.
From 2008 to 2011 the post office invested $2.5 billion in capital investments to modernize the postal system. This money was used to purchase multi-line optical readers, mechanized machinery.
Here on P.E.I. every community with a post office has seen a dramatic cut in hours of service and a reduction in paid hours. In 2013, the post office implemented a centralized sorting machine in Halifax, Nova Scotia, exactly 300 kilometres or a three-hour car ride from my hometown of Summerside. All the mail is now trucked to Halifax from the island and then returned to P.E.I. for delivery. It now takes three to five days to deliver mail that once took one day.
The carbon footprint of trucking the mail back and forth from P.E.I. to Halifax is outrageous. We need to be moving toward a greener environment. In my depot, this has eliminated two full-time positions.
Local businesses have suffered from these changes. The post office has an obligation to its owners—the public. This is a crown corporation, not a non-government organization, as Deepak and his buddies wish it were.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak at this session. I welcome any questions you may have.