Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Hello.
This is the first year that we have had community mail boxes.
The transition was quite difficult. There were locks that were frozen or defective. Personally, the lock on my community mail box has been changed three times in the recent months and it will be changed a fourth time, according to the note we received.
People are worried about the location of the boxes. A number of people have to walk past a box to get to their own. The location of the boxes seems a bit problematic. There is no parking. Some boxes are located on busy streets and people have to park on the street. This could be dangerous, a safety issue.
Then there are cleaning and clearing problems. The boxes are cleaned by a small van with a scraper on the front. After a storm, the first three or four rows of boxes are not accessible for a number of days.
Sand and salt are spread out by a dump truck. In some places, though, there is no salt or sand.
Moreover, there are no garbage cans near the community boxes. When people receive flyers, it creates pollution.
There is no lighting at night where the boxes are located.
However, today, we do have some media through which to have discussions. We have focus groups and social media. I invited our population to fill out the survey online and to provide comments on Facebook.
Part of the population wants the door-to-door mail delivery, but a good portion of the population has accepted community mailboxes.
That being said, everyone has concerns for the elderly, seniors, and people who have mobility issues or disabilities. The population of our region has the highest average age in New Brunswick—I think the average age is close to 50—which means this issue affects a lot of our citizens because they are seniors.
Having documentation or a survey to ask if someone would be open to the idea of paying extra to have door-to-door mail delivery is not a viable option for our citizens, because most of them have fixed revenue or limited revenue. The service should be provided to all of our citizens.
Carbon tax is a big issue right now. Canada Post is not a greener organization. We were very deceived. All the vehicles that have been bought are not electrical vehicles. When we want to encourage green energy and green habits among the citizens, I think the institutions in the province and in municipalities in Canada should be the leaders in embracing greener change by having electric cars or cars that run on biomass. When institutions embrace those new technologies, it brings down costs for citizens, if they also want to go in that direction. Therefore, it would be nice if all the vehicles were electric and if we provided some access to electrical outlets for people coming in.
Now I'll talk about the jobs. I'm a college professor and a college director now. I remember, in early 2000, we went to an e-commerce conference and they asked what the biggest competitor of Canada Post was in 2000. Everybody said UPS or Purolator. It was email. Technology and new trends do affect the working environment.
For a region like ours, losing eight jobs is the equivalent of Moncton losing close to 100 jobs. How can we do things differently?
In the 1980s, the Trudeau government decentralized the public service. That's why all the social insurance numbers are created in Bathurst. That's why in Newfoundland we have Revenue Canada, and Moncton has DFO.
How can we profit from all of those outlets across Canada and in rural areas add new services for our citizens through the current offices of Canada Post?