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.
10:20 a.m.
Executive Director, Greater Charlottetown Area Chamber of Commerce
Absolutely. Yes, we do invoicing for our membership dues as well as other non-dues fees. A number of our members do require that. In fact, we find that larger corporations actually want no more letter mail invoices.
10:20 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
I've noticed that too.
This monopoly they have right now in mail is also an opportunity, as I see it. I asked the Sydney chamber the same question. Right now businesses, if they need to send mail, actual mail, have no second choice. In the case of a labour disruption, what would your organizations do? Where would you go if you actually needed to mail something but there was no Canada Post service available, whether it was an employer-caused or employee-caused labour disruption?
10:20 a.m.
Executive Director, Greater Charlottetown Area Chamber of Commerce
Earlier this summer we potentially faced this situation. We distribute a quarterly magazine. It's treated as letter mail. We were preparing an emergency response as to how we were going to push that out. We were actually looking at a delivery model that was very human resource-heavy.
10:20 a.m.
Executive Director, Greater Charlottetown Area Chamber of Commerce
Yes. It was going to be a combination of courier services, staff, and other volunteers to distribute that.
10:20 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Would you support, then, the elimination of that monopoly on the 500-gram envelopes in order to allow the business community to figure out a solution, i.e., to allow the Uber of letter delivery to be like a side service?
The example I give is this. The committee heard about a service in France called Relais Colis, which provides the end or last stage of B2B delivery. If a package can't get through a postal service, they'll deliver to a local business. You indicate to them what you want. They text you afterwards. It's like an automated service. It's like a supplementary service to their postal service, which hasn't been privatized.
Would that be something of interest to the business community here?
10:20 a.m.
Executive Director, Greater Charlottetown Area Chamber of Commerce
Although we represent what would be identified as an urban area, we have a lot of members in rural areas. Canada is a very rural nation. I think to respond to that question we would need to understand what the implications are for delivering to rural areas, and if it would exclude certain individuals from being on our distribution list.
On the question of moving to a model that opens it up, I don't know if we can answer yes or no to that. I think we need to understand who would maybe be excluded from that or what the implications would be for our rural membership and our rural communities in terms of delivery. I don't have a firm response on that.
10:20 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
I imagine that Canada Post will continue having to deliver the mail, as it does now, but the monopoly would end, so that businesses could find a means or a solution to delivering to high volume areas and low volume areas as well. There's just that extra little bit of competition and innovation. Micro-businesses are usually really good at this, at finding a solution.
10:25 a.m.
Owner, Milk & Amber
As someone who really rarely sends letter mail or only sends very small packages—which wouldn't the case for the bulk of my group of makers and artisans I'm speaking for—I'm not really sure what the effect of that would be.
10:25 a.m.
Conservative
10:25 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
I'm going to ask about your group. You mentioned Etsy, and I know Etsy because my wife has used it in the past. She has a micro-business as well.
We're trying to figure out how we make Canada Post sustainable for the next 20 to 30 years. For the younger generation—and I think you and I are part of that generation, sorry, Kelly—everything's on our smart phones. I have a BlackBerry, so I know I'm a Luddite. Everything seems to be moving to e-invoicing, e-sales, e-commerce. There's the parcel part of it, but there's also this letter part of it. Canada Post right now does a good job delivering the mail, but it's just that that part of the service is costing a lot of money. Do you have a solution that you could provide? Is there something that your organization, the people you interact with, would like to see that could also provide extra revenue for Canada Post to sustain itself into the future?
The Canada Post of the future is not the Canada Post we have now.
10:25 a.m.
Conservative
10:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you, Madam.
Thank you, Tom, for throwing your youthfulness in the chair's face once again.
Mr. Duvall for seven minutes, please.
10:25 a.m.
NDP
Scott Duvall NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much for coming. You have a beautiful province here. I really appreciate it.
You mentioned, Ms. McDonald, some of the delivery service you're unhappy with. You see a change in the way it's being delivered, that it's maybe taking a little longer. I notice that both of you—that is, Ms. McGuire also—have said the same thing. Would your organizations allow a small increase for better service? What do your members want? Is better service at a cost, or do they want better service at no cost?
10:25 a.m.
Executive Director, Greater Charlottetown Area Chamber of Commerce
I can step in here. The observation from our committee, and in speaking to members, is that increased costs for using Canada Post is something they would want to be evaluated very carefully. As was noted, we're dealing with small businesses, and their profit/loss margins are very minimal. We know the impacts that can have if it changes significantly.
What we would consider and would perhaps look at, or encourage the task force to look at, is maybe a tiered-pricing model, as described in the task force report. In that model, users who are looking for enhanced service, which would relate to speed, or perhaps quality—I'm not sure, whatever the definition of quality is, but I'm thinking it would be more speed of service—could be considered in terms of price points in a tiered-pricing model. Again, we just want to understand what that looks like and how it would specifically impact our members and their businesses.
10:25 a.m.
Owner, Milk & Amber
Even a small increase to the base costs of sending parcels and letter mail would have an impact on a lot of the people I'm speaking for. If someone's earnings for a year might only be a couple of thousand dollars, paying even $12 instead of $10 to send something really starts to add up. It makes it more of an expensive hobby than a business.
I think if there were more communication as to the changes in service, that could help, because we could then communicate that to our customers. But if we feel that we're not supposed to notice any changes in service, and these still happen, and we as business people have to be accountable for these but don't realize that....
So just communicating any changes in delivery would be helpful.
10:25 a.m.
NDP
Scott Duvall NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
As you know, Canada Post has made a decision, with the previous government, to discontinue door-to-door delivery service and go to community mailboxes. That has caused a great angst amongst many people. Canada Post has a service that it charges for on your envelopes and parcels.
Now, when they go to community mailboxes, they take their responsibility and put the mailboxes up, but they put them in locations where people with mobility issues will have challenges. There is lack of parking, so people can't get to their mailboxes, because the parking is on the road allowance.
People then start calling their city hall officials: they want a light; there is too much garbage but no garbage containers; and with the graffiti there, the aesthetics are wrong for the business. All of this costs money and is now downloaded back to the municipal taxpayer, who is the business owner. Do you think it's fair that they have taken their responsibility and put it onto you so that they can save some money and say they want to be above the profit line?
10:30 a.m.
Owner, Milk & Amber
I suppose that is the postal service's shared responsibility. Even though I realize it is a crown corporation, a federal responsibility, I see how the concept of being able to send and receive mail could be something that's shared—not necessarily always in cost, but in responsibility.
Do I think it's fair that it has to be downloaded? I suppose not. Whether residential delivery is door to door, or whether it is to a community mailbox, I can't speak to the impact on my business personally, or on other businesses. In that respect, I don't really know what the change has been for people.
10:30 a.m.
Executive Director, Greater Charlottetown Area Chamber of Commerce
We haven't had any significant negative feedback about the community mailboxes from the business community's perspective, primarily because a lot of the urban deliveries would be.... They wouldn't have seen a lot changed; they probably go to their post office. I haven't had a lot of feedback there.
The mailboxes were installed. It was a new initiative, and a certain level of responsibility by Canada Post Corporation as a crown corp is required for their maintenance, for communication, and for ensuring that this is not falling on the municipal government, which really doesn't need this additional impact and this financial responsibility. I wasn't aware that there was significant impact on the municipal governments. I haven't heard that locally, but I certainly feel that Canada Post has responsibility with this transition, for the short term and the long term, so that it is taken into care.