Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.
I am a postal worker from the Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean region, a region that has been hard hit over the last few years.
In the last five years, Canada Post has closed 50% of the urban retail points of sale. I am talking about the ones located right in town, whether in Chicoutimi or in Jonquière. That represents a very large number of well-paid jobs.
The service has not been affected for the single and simple reason that Canada Post transferred its jobs to pharmacies. What they did was to give pharmacies franchises. As a result, the work is now done by pharmacy employees who are paid minimum wage rather than by well-paid employees with good working conditions.
We know that a majority of Canadians have come out against privatizing the postal service. I believe this is a disguised way of privatizing the service.
I have personally experienced the elimination of the postal service in the town of Chicoutimi. I lost my route and I lost my customers. Thirty of my co-workers and I were transferred to different positions with different shifts. I am not doing to dwell on this, but I want to point out that the Canada Post Corporation did not give us notice. We learned a few months before that we were losing our jobs. We were never given details about where we were going. We were left in a kind of vacuum for a long time.
Two weeks before the date for installing the community boxes, management met with us to inform us that we were being transferred to clerk jobs. One week before the date, they had us choose between evening positions and night positions. You have to remember that we were the youngest full-time employees in the office. We all had young families; there were single-parent mothers. We were also informed that if we were not able to show up for our new shifts, we would be considered to be on leave without pay, and then be dismissed. This situation caused my co-workers incredible stress. Is it reasonable for a Crown corporation, one of the biggest employers in the country, to have so little idea of how to communicate with its employees? I ask you.
Today, I saw the CEO of Canada Post here. I have to talk about this. He told this committee that no jobs had been lost at Canada Post. I would very much like him to come to the shop floor and tell it to the temporary employees. They are employees who have five or six or seven years' seniority and have no work today.
In addition, the part-time employees also have no work. I would like him to come to the floor and tell it to those employees. I do not want to dwell on this, but I do want to repeat that we were promised good jobs. We were told to look to the future generation. I think I am the best example to show why good jobs have to be retained at Canada Post.
I am going to change the subject. I live in a small village, Saint-Fulgence, where there is no caisse populaire. Desjardins abandoned us about five years ago. To deposit a cheque, you have to travel 30 kilometres there and 30 kilometres back. There is no other way because there is also no Internet in the village. There is absolutely nothing else we can do. The post office is three kilometres from my home. Service is available there all day; it is computerized. I think that adding postal banking would not be too complicated. I have not witnessed it in the past, but the service has been provided. Postal banking existed in the past; we are not inventing something. All that would be needed is to restore a service.
Canada Post has other possibilities in the small post offices. I did not have to think very hard about it. For example, I had an old television and I did not know where to take it because you have to travel 60 kilometres to take back electronics. Canada Post could also offer that service.
I have one minute left. I would like to talk about the time when Canada Post installed community mailboxes. Briefly, the community mailbox is in a catastrophic location; it is extremely dangerous. We have mobilized and for three months, we have been in a dispute with the Canada Post representatives. They refuse to move the box; they do not give a damn about us. They tell us that they will inform Ottawa of the problem and give us any news. I suppose they are waiting for an accident to happen before moving the box.