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.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
Going forward, what would your recommendation be to Canada Post?
I want 30 seconds from each of you, if you can. What would you like to see? I have a minute left.
10:40 a.m.
Mayor, Municipality of Bathurst
Well, it's working together with other government agencies.
Recently, in villages up north.... We have something in New Brunswick called Service New Brunswick, which provides service to the citizens, such as renewing your driver's licence, registration for your car, hunting licences, but they're closing those offices because it's not feasible. Now we're closing Canada Post outlets because it's not feasible.
Why can we not combine both services and provide a service that would be more efficient?
10:45 a.m.
Mayor, Village of Chipman
I'm not quite sure how to answer that.
I really believe that a Canada Post that provides just the basic services, in a secure place, for those people who can't access, and drive, and that kind of thing, would make a big difference—quaint, very simple kinds of things. It does not have to be the complicated system we were talking about previously in terms of a massive expansion. Those are not high-technology items.
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Thanks for having us here. It's a beautiful community. I'm very happy to be here.
Mayor Atkinson, I'm very impressed with your city. I wish we could just copy and paste it throughout a lot of rural areas in the country.
Going back to the banking, I know you spoke to a lot of banks, and I congratulate you on the hard work. Where did you get with the savings unions or credit unions?
10:45 a.m.
Mayor, Village of Chipman
A lot of them have found that they're having problems. As small community-based banking, they have found it more challenging probably than the large banks. Their profit margins have been severely cut.
When we approached, say, Progressive—I'll use that as an example—they said no right up front. Some of the larger banks, interestingly enough, gave us a hearing, sometimes a polite hearing, but nonetheless a hearing. Some actually came into the community, looked, and said there's a business case. Year one and year two worked, but they could not justify years three, four, and five.
That's a quick answer.
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Perfect.
This is a difficult thing to answer. I come from the tourism industry, where for new flights, the hotel community, the tourism community, and the airport authority, would subsidize Air Canada, Icelandair, etc., and guarantee them x number of seats—profits—for the first five years.
Would your community consider doing that for a savings union? Would you say come in, but because it's such a battle for service, we the citizens of the city will subsidize it if necessary?
10:45 a.m.
Mayor, Village of Chipman
Under the circumstances, with 1,250 people, a budget basically of $1.7 million, limited services, sewage, that kind of thing, it is not in the books to do that.
We could, because we have a facility available, with nominal costs, subsidize them in that sense. We would be willing to do that, and are prepared to do that, and have announced that.
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I understand.
That's why I said it's a difficult situation. We get into this a lot where we want these services, but someone else to pay, that type of thing. Thanks very much for that.
I don't know if they do it out here, but, out west, CIBC offers mobile banking services to small communities. They actually bring in, pretty much like a Brink's truck and open up the back. There's an ATM. There's also cash for cash exchange, etc.
Has that come up at all?
10:45 a.m.
Mayor, Village of Chipman
No.
Royal Bank talked about bringing in some services, but not that kind of thing. They talked about sending in specialists in the different categories, for mortgages and all those kinds of things, part-time.
That's not the answer, truth be known, because people have businesses. The businesses in the community have to have a place to make deposits. We have no place to make deposits as of today.
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
10:45 a.m.
Mayor, Village of Chipman
Yes, that's a big thing, and so is access to coin, although we're already working on a system for that.
10:45 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I was going to say there is a global coin exchange.
Thanks very much and, again, the city sounds fantastic.
Mayor Fongemie, what discussion did you or any of your department have with Canada Post before any of the CMBs were put in? I ask because we have been asking all the communities if they were consulted. We've heard from one and I've heard from others that have said, “We actually refuse to consult with them. We're so against the idea of CMBs.” Of course, then the constituents end up with CMBs in locations where they don't want them. What was the process that you experienced? I know you have noted that the CMBs are in areas that are not perfect.
10:45 a.m.
Mayor, Municipality of Bathurst
I think it was an open communication, and the city was open. There were certain areas of the city where we already had community mailboxes, in one subdivision, in particular. I think there's openness and communication, but with all the issues that were brought to us by the citizens, we feel that nobody's listening to us now about all the issues.
10:50 a.m.
Mayor, Municipality of Bathurst
It's a little bit hard for me to say because we're all new since May. I think there was some consultation, but not in the way we would have liked it to happen.
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
What would you have liked? Would you have liked for them to walk through with your engineers and say, “put it here, and put it here”?
10:50 a.m.
Mayor, Municipality of Bathurst
Yes. We could have worked together on planning the boxes and the maintenance, etc., on whether there was something that maybe the city could have done or provided input on. Obviously, that wasn't done.
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you very much.
Our final intervention will come from Mr. Whalen.
You have five minutes, please.
10:50 a.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Thank you all for coming.
We've been focusing a bit on the service levels that Canada Post has provided and a bit on the financial impact. I want to ask a few questions about the future of Canada Post. It can either be leveraged to greater serve the community, or perhaps contract so that it can avoid burdening taxpayers and allow the markets to provide service. This is the fundamental difference in views that different groups share in terms of Canada Post going forward.
When we look at the community mailbox issue and when we talk about saving door-to-door delivery, different people come at it with different figures, and there are different understandings of what door to door means. The annual report and the task force report talk about five types of service. I'd like each of your thoughts on what you would group together as door to door. We have a delivery service that is directly to the door in urban areas. We have a delivery service that is to the end of laneways in some rural areas. We have a delivery service to community mailboxes. We have a delivery service to common indoor locations in apartment buildings. It's not to someone's apartment door but to the common area on the ground floor. There's also delivery to the rural post office. When we talk about door-to-door delivery and saving it, which of these would you categorize as a sufficient level of door-to-door service?
Ms. Anderson.
10:50 a.m.
President, Atlantic Region, Local 12, Canadian Union of Postal Workers
You've named most types of door-to-door delivery. There are rural boxes at the end of the street and panels in the apartment buildings in the cities. Actually where my son lives in Vancouver, he has door-to-door delivery to his apartment door.
We also consider delivery to a person's mailbox attached to their house as door-to-door service.