Thank you.
I'm going to make my remarks in English, but I'm very willing to answer any questions in French.
I actually presented before the task force committee. I was very disappointed with the task force report on Canada Post, because I thought it concentrated too much on how to cut services and save money and not enough on how to expand services by Canada Post. The main role of Canada Post is to provide public services to Canadians, and that remains a valid one.
In other countries, they provide far more federal, provincial, and municipal services through the post office. My daughter who lives in the U.K. just got her passport through the post office in the U.K. and had her digital imprints taken at the post office. Other countries have broadband and mobile services, including the U.K., France, and Italy. The U.K. has broadband and land-line services. The most important one is postal banking and providing financial services. I don't think the report did justice to looking at that.
First, the report did not examine countries very similar to Canada, like the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, all of which have postal banking. In all of those countries, postal banking is very profitable and provides a huge chunk of the revenues of the postal system in those countries. All of those countries have a concentrated banking system just like ours. Each one of those countries has several of the major banks, as I've outlined in my remarks, which you should get a copy of. Of the 50 largest banks, Canada has some, Switzerland has some, the U.K has some, etc., but they still have success of postal banking there.
The number of banks have shrunk dramatically. The report looked at the last five years, where it's gone up slightly, but if we look at it from now back to 1990, there has been a 20% drop in bank branches in Canada. We've lost a huge number of bank branches. It went down from 7,964 to 6,348 in 2015. For credit unions, it's even more disastrous with a decline of about 26% since 2002. There's been a major decline in the number of branches.
I did a study that looked at the availability of banks in communities that have a post office, and 45% of the rural communities in Canada, which have a post office, do not have a bank or a credit union branch. So when they say that the banks are doing a great job, no, the banks are retreating to the big cities, and the higher-end business. That's their job as for-profit institutions. There is a real possibility there for the post office to offer financial services.
I think the study done by the task force showed that 7% of all Canadians would open an account right away, and that 22% would probably open an account. This is a huge number. Even if just 7% of people opened an account in a postal bank, that would be a huge number of people. It would be one of the top banks in Canada, just like that, overnight. There is a big interest in it. Six hundred municipalities have supported postal banking, which is a lot, including Toronto and Victoria, big cities, as well as many smaller communities, including many in Quebec.
I'll come back to some of these points afterwards, but I would like to say that there is a real possibility for postal banking. I think it would be great if the task force looked at how to do that.
I just want to make one last point before I go to my conclusions, which is that there are only about 56 banks or credit unions on reserves out of 615 reserves, and we just updated that. There's a real possibility of offering postal banking on reserves.
I think it would be great if the post office interviewed people from France, the U.K., Switzerland, and Italy, by Skype to save money, on postal banking and other services. It would be great if the committee could get the study that Canada Post did, which recommended postal banking, but was never released. If you could get that released, that would also be tremendous.
I'll stop there.