Government Operations Committee on Oct. 5th, 2016

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

Anyway, that's fine, because the focus, or where I was going with this, is that we have to think outside the box. Yes, there is a quantitative analysis of what the financial situation is and how to improve it. You're in the business; you're saying here is a plateau that you have reached, and in order to reinvent yourself.... Well, Canada Post has to.

Everybody's talking about how bad it is. It isn't. You talked about it. It has potential; it has a network; it has logistics. Japan actually bought Australia's logistics. If everybody has this desire to buy logistics, how do we make this corporation better?

We've heard about non-consultation with labour. We keep on hearing the same themes. We hear from municipalities that Canada Post didn't consult with them before putting in the community mailboxes. Yes, we've heard it. They've spent so much, billions of dollars, and it has created inefficiencies, and not efficiencies.

How do you move forward? What would you do if you had such a beautiful network and advantages?

[John Barrett]

As you know, a crown corporation is a very odd entity.

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

Yes.

[John Barrett]

In private business we can make a decision at noon and have it implemented at two o'clock, whether it was smart or not. At five o'clock, if we found out it didn't work, we could change our mind the next day.

There's such a bureaucracy within Canada Post, and then you add the aspect of its having major union, like the car industry has. Then you add parliamentary oversight to it. If you ask me, you'd have to be out of your mind to be in the senior management of Canada Post.

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

They have a charter to operate within, so that's why it's that way. Its charter might have to move into the 21st century, because they're told to be sustainable, and they're told to fund their pension liabilities or to account for them as if they were going into insolvency, and so on. Those are things that you think about.

[John Barrett]

I'd like to add one thing.

Despite how the union might feel about Deepak, we've had such a close connection with Canada Post for such a long time that we see a genuine interest in making things better, and perhaps a little more long-term, down-the-road thinking than we've seen in the past. Of course, some of that is forced on them fiscally.

We have confidence that they're looking the right way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Gentlemen, thank you so much for your presentations and being here today. I'll give you the same standing offer we do to everyone who presents before us. Should you have any additional information that you wish to bring to the attention of our committee members, please submit that as quickly as you can directly to our clerk.

We are suspended for our next panellists.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Colleagues, if we could have you back at the table, then I would appreciate it.

Thank you.

Good morning, Ms. Carroll and Mr. Casey, and a particularly warm welcome to you from this committee. It's unusual for a member of Parliament to be sitting where you're sitting, but my understanding is that you've been asked to be here to represent the City of Charlottetown. Is that correct?

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

I think that's correct.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you for that.

I'm sure that you are aware of the process we have here. We're asking all of our panels to start with a five-minute opening statement, to be followed by questions from all of the committee members. We're looking for you to assist us in our deliberations on the future of Canada Post.

Ms. Carroll, I think we'll start with you. If you could give us your views in five minutes or less, I would appreciate it.

[Marcia Carroll, Executive Director, The PEI Council of People with Disabilities]

Okay. That's a challenge for me to do it in five minutes or less, but I'll do my best.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

[Marcia Carroll]

Thank you to the members of Parliament and the committee members for inviting me here today to present the views of people with disabilities in Prince Edward Island in regard to Canada Post. I'd also like to briefly recognize that we are in Mi'kmaq territory, our first nations people here. We honour them for allowing us to be here today.

I'm sure you all know and have heard in your consultations across the country that there are just under four million people living with disabilities in Canada. There are just under 4 million people living with disabilities in Canada, or 3.77 million to be precise. It is a huge community of individual Canadians who depend on door-to-door postal service. In article 4 of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, under general obligations, it says that no corporations or no state partners will refrain from engaging in acts or participating in things that are inconsistent to the UN convention. We believe, as an organization and as a community, that ending door-to-door service to people with disabilities will be in direct opposition of article 4 of that convention.

We believe that door-to-door service is essential for people with disabilities to enjoy full citizenship in this province and this country. There are four key areas where you see that play out. One is safety. People with disabilities are extremely vulnerable in our communities. They're more vulnerable than an able-bodied Canadian, and you see that twofold for women with disabilities. Crime is increasing at the community mailboxes, especially when we see people approaching on cheque day. There are systematic criminal elements in our society who watch the mailboxes on cheque day, and they watch for people who are particularly vulnerable approaching those mailboxes. Those are the first people who fall victims to crime. They are people with mobility issues and people with hearing impairments. They can't hear somebody coming up behind them. Criminals can steal their cheques, as well as from people with physical impairments who are struggling to work their community mailboxes.

Another key point why we feel that door-to-door service is essential is accessibility. Community mailboxes are placed in communities quickly. There's no consultation with city officials or other individuals. It doesn't appear that universal design principles have been used at all when we look at where they are placed, how they are placed, and the access leading up to them. We all live in this country. We all know what Canada is like in the wintertime, and if you read the Farmers' Almanac, it's going to be another bad one this year. Snow removal, the removal of ice, and the freezing of the boxes can be a problem. I know that a considerable effort was made to look at the design elements so that cool packs wouldn't freeze, but getting access to the mailboxes is a challenge for people with disabilities.

Another thing that happens is that when people are feeling particularly vulnerable, or they feel they can't access their mail, they lose their autonomy and their dignity because they have to reach out to other people to look after getting their mail for them, which opens them up to financial fraud and makes them more vulnerable.

We believe that we should be increasing the services that the post office offers and not decreasing them. We have seen that trend start to happen in a number of countries, such as France, Italy, and Japan. We believe that our local post offices could do banking, process passport applications, supply fishing and hunting licences, and do photo registration. All kinds of different services could be provided in tandem with our local post offices. We also know that our Canadian postal services are the greenest services in the country and are central to doing effective delivery of parcels and reducing CO2 emissions. Our valued postal workers and postal carriers walk those routes five days a week, and they do that in fast and efficiently.

I guess my time is up, but let me just very quickly add that the postal workers are seen as community watch people in our community. They are absolutely the first point of contact for people with disabilities in terms of identifying homes that aren't picking up mail. Maybe there's trouble inside, or a person has fallen and needs help. If we remove that service, we will break that chain of safety.

I believe those are fundamental principles that guide us and make us a great country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you—

[Marcia Carroll]

Part of that is the postal service.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much. My apologies, but again, we're at five minutes.

[Marcia Carroll]

That's hard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Five minutes can go by quite quickly

[Marcia Carroll]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I'm sure that, as we have found, a lot of the information that you want to transmit to this committee will come out during the question and answer period.

[Marcia Carroll]

Okay. Great.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Casey, five minutes, please.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Colleagues, I want to start by asking each of you with a device in front of you to please Google “2015 Liberal Party platform”. If you do that, right at the very top you'll see the PDF with the Liberal Party platform.

Once you have that, I would ask you to go to page 34. You'll see, in red, “Canada Post”, and then, in bold print, “We will save home mail delivery.”

Welcome to Charlottetown, folks, the birthplace of Confederation and a riding where 100% of the people do not have home mail delivery. Charlottetown became a riding where 100% of the people do not have home mail delivery six days after the Liberals won the election. During those six days, there was a full-out effort by Canada Post to pop up these community mailboxes. They popped up like dandelions all over the place. People were working overtime to ensure that it would happen.

At the end of this process that you're presently engaged in, you'll be making recommendations to government. Given what you are reading on page 34, we're not talking about “whether” to save home mail delivery but “how”. It's for you to decide how home mail delivery will be saved.

When you do, I would ask that you bear in mind what the situation was in this country on October 19, not six days later, because if you decide that we're frozen as of the date of the moratorium six days after the election, you will have validated a defiant, arrogant action on the part of Canada Post that betrayed the voters in this riding, 84% of whom voted for parties that were in favour of saving home mail delivery.

Section 22 of the Canada Post Corporation Act and of course the charter make some allowances for government to provide direction to Canada Post. True, as a crown corporation, there is some degree of separation. But whether it be through legislation, through policy, or through a face-to-face meeting between the minister and senior officials of Canada Post, I would ask that you include in your recommendations something that ensures that this does not happen again—ensures that Canada Post is not allowed to thumb its nose at the government as it did in the six days following the election.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for coming to Charlottetown. Good luck with your deliberations. Enjoy your time in our fair city.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll now start with the question and answer process.

Mr. Whalen, once again you're first up.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you very much for coming here today. It's always nice to hear from representatives of seniors' groups and groups representing the disabled and other disadvantaged groups. They experience and use the postal service in different ways and have different needs.

It's also a bit surprising to see Mr. Casey here today. His name has been on the list for a while, but it's interesting, and typically the point that Mr. Casey makes is the one that Mr. Weir normally does here at committee. Of course, I will pose the same challenges as I did to Mr. Weir.

St. John's was in exactly the same situation as Charlottetown was during the election. We asked them point blank what they felt it meant when we said that we would save home mail delivery. They talked about how we were not as strong on this point as the NDP had been during the election.

What it meant was that we would put a moratorium in place, which we did six days after the election, and that we would do this very consultation process. Why should Charlottetown be treated differently because their changes happened over the span of, say, from October 17 when the holes were dug to October 26 when the installation of the boxes was finished, versus some other community whose mailboxes were installed in August or September?