Evidence of meeting #39 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 services.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Okay, so you consider all three of those things as door-to-door delivery.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Mr. Atkinson, I know it doesn't apply to your community particularly, but when we talk about door-to-door service, what would you consider to be door to door?
Mayor, Village of Chipman
Our current situation, in truth, is that we're not having a lot of reaction to that kind of thing. We have a lot of reaction, but not to that.
In the rural places, I consider it where they pick up their mail and that kind of thing. If they have a question, they can go to the post office. Outside the community, it's a little different. I really can't speak to that because I don't know their comments. They don't report to us or complain to us.
Mayor, Municipality of Bathurst
I consider all of those options as door to door. We live in a city with a lot of rural characteristics. There's downtown concentration and subdivisions, but there are rural parts within city limits where we have farms. All of those different options are considered door to door, in my mind.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
When we talk about the potential additional cost savings by moving to community mailboxes, you talk about an extra $320 million per year. There is $80 million per year that's claimed to have been saved by converting about 850,000 doors to community mailboxes. There's discussion about converting the rest—about 28% of homes that still have directly to the door delivery—to community mailboxes. That's about $100 per unit per year. Do you feel that using tax money to subsidize this type of higher level of service is justified? Or do you believe that all things being considered equal, the community mailbox service is a high enough level of service when you take into account that if we don't go ahead and do this, we'll have to find the $320 million elsewhere? Maybe you disagree with the premise. Mr. Mayor?
Mayor, Municipality of Bathurst
I think everyone has to be efficient. If the service provider gives a quality service, which it's not right now with the implementation of the community mailboxes, it brings other issues and does bring other costs. I'm not sure the savings are real savings if they've changed my box four times in the last six months. That's a lot of added cost.
Having said that, coming back, it's working together with other departments, because what we have with Canada Post is that network in rural communities, and how we can benefit from that network is by adding other services and maybe being more efficient overall with all the departments in Canada.
Mayor, Village of Chipman
The community post office boxes I think are working. We're not hearing a lot of complaints about that because they can reasonably access the local post office. Were that post office to close, it would be an entirely different situation. There would be a crisis and there would be another one of these presentations on that issue alone.
Liberal
President, Atlantic Region, Local 12, Canadian Union of Postal Workers
Postal workers believe that the post office is profitable. I can't see any savings with the community mailboxes, just from what I see on a daily basis. We have unassigned employees now who are in our office every day. Some days they have work and some days they don't. We have letter carriers doing many hours of overtime because the routes are overstructured. It was just done badly. Some of our unassigned people are also using rental vans for delivering parcels and doing other things because we can't get the work done with the people we have on the street right at the moment. I can't see any huge savings in what they've done in the city.
Conservative
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Well, thank you for your answers. I greatly appreciate them.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Lady and gentlemen, thank you so much for being here today.
Should you have any additional information that you wish to give to the committee that would assist us in our deliberations, we invite you to do so. You can contact our clerk and give that information to her directly. All of that information will be combined with the testimony that you've already given today, which will help form part of our final report.
Thank you once again.
We will suspend for a couple of minutes while our next panellists come to the table.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Ladies and gentlemen and colleagues, we'll start again.
Monsieur Bélanger and Madame Gammon, welcome.
Were you both in the room for the last session so you were able to see how this process works?
Jean-Luc Bélanger Director General , Association acadienne et francophone des aînées et aînés du Nouveau-Brunswick
No, we just arrived.
Director General , Association acadienne et francophone des aînées et aînés du Nouveau-Brunswick
Our invitation was for 11 o'clock, so we stuck to that.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you very much. I'll make a few opening comments to explain how the process works.
We will ask both of you to give a brief opening statement for, hopefully, no more than five minutes. After the conclusion of your opening remarks, all committee members will have a chance to ask each of you questions about your presentation, and more specifically, your views with respect to the future of Canada Post. All of your comments, recommendations, and observations will be taken into account and will help form part of our final report that we will be presenting to Parliament later this year.
Monsieur Bélanger, I would ask you to give your opening statement of, hopefully, no more than five minutes. The floor is yours.
Director General , Association acadienne et francophone des aînées et aînés du Nouveau-Brunswick
Allow me to introduce myself. I am the director general of the Association acadienne et francophone des aînées et aînés du Nouveau-Brunswick.
Parliament's announcements about the changes in Canada Post services caused seniors a lot of worries. They are used to receiving services nearby. In the regions, there is home delivery for some services, while others are through the community mail boxes.
All of these issues and new technologies worry seniors because they can not always get about, depending on whether they live in a rural or urban area. In New Brunswick, there are three main urban centres, which are nevertheless not cities like Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa or Toronto. There are many rural communities in the rest of the province.
The whole issue relates to seniors and their concerns about services. Seniors are not always up on the latest technology. They are still used to relying on Canada Post services. Those services are so important to them because that is how they keep in touch with people close to them. Nowadays people are spread out all over the country, or even outside the country, and communicating with their children and grandchildren is important to seniors. Mail service is still essential to many people.
Of course the baby boomers reaching retirement age and the generation X and Y cohorts are and will remain much more comfortable with technology. So we want to talk about the transition between the two. This is important. How can the transition be managed in a gradual way, so that seniors do not feel vulnerable about their habits and their traditional way of using Canada Post?
Conservative
Anne-Marie Gammon President, Réseau communauté en santé Bathurst
Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to participate in these discussions.
I attended the public meetings held by the union in Bathurst. For my part, I have had a mail box and have not had home delivery for 31 years. We used to live in Janeville and now we live in Bathurst, and we chose not to receive home mail delivery. That does not mean, however, that I do not believe in the importance of home delivery. Bathurst has a population that is aging rapidly. I think our population is aging more rapidly than anywhere else in the province, and there are several people with disabilities. Personally, I think we should give people the choice between home delivery and a community mail box.
I think Canada Post's future could be guaranteed by adding related services such as banking services, MoneyGram, for example, and similar services, that could be offered at the post office. Moreover, the fact the role of Bathurst's main post office has been reduced and some services have been transferred to Jean Coutu—I think the Jean Coutu stores across the province won the contract—is not necessarily a good thing for Canada Post's survival.
Now that contracts have been awarded and post offices eliminated, there are employees who do not necessarily have the same wages or working conditions. Personally, I think we should examine Canada Post as a whole and determine what is beneficial not only for the corporation, but also for citizens across the country.
In New Brunswick, as I said, our population is aging and not everyone has a car to get to a community mail box. That concerns me. Nor is everyone physically able to walk to the box, even if it is nearby. That also concerns me tremendously. A number of people have commented on this and I wonder if it was the right decision to install community mail boxes.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you very much.
Our first intervention will come from Mr. Ayoub.
Mr. Ayoub, you have the floor and you have six minutes.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for being here, ladies and gentlemen.
I would like a clarification, Ms. Gammon. You represent the Réseau communauté en santé de Bathurst. What is this network?