Thank you for having me here. I will make a short presentation.
Let me introduce myself briefly. My name is Richard St-Onge. I'm the president of the FTQ Quebec City and Chaudière-Appalaches Regional Council. I work with all unions, including my colleagues appointed to Canada Post. I am a jack of all trades, but master of none. That pretty much sums up my situation.
I will present my personal views on Canada Post and what could be a solution in this matter. I read with interest the file I was given, and I got stuck on the point about postal banks. I feel that the solution involves postal banks, among other things. People are saying that this service would help to keep quality jobs in cities and in the regions. God knows that it's interesting enough keeping the words “jobs” and “quality” together in the expression “quality jobs”.
Now I'll move on to development in the regions. To make a long story short, I have lived in Saint-Patrice-de-Beaurivage for three years. It's a small municipality that still has the pleasure of having a post office. That might be a funny thing to hear for a city dweller, but in a municipality of 1,200 people, the post office is very practical and most appreciated.
Providing a postal bank might also allow the creation of new jobs at Canada Post in a system that's already well-established . Allow me to read an excerpt from the Liberal Party's platform in the last election:
We will invest to create more jobs and better opportunities for Canadians.
After ten years under Stephen Harper, good-quality job opportunities for young Canadians are tougher and tougher to find.
Indeed, Canada Post offers good-quality jobs. We need to keep them and find a way to do so.
The witnesses I've seen today have spoken about Canada Post's deficits. Unless our sources are different, I think we're anticipating deficits that haven't yet happened. However, if I'm not mistaken, Canada Post has had a surplus of about $1.5 billion in the last 22 years. We can say what we want about the numbers.
In my short research, I learned that a postal banking service is currently offered in about sixty countries. The service is relatively new in several countries. This suggests that physical mail is changing at the global level and that several postal services have adapted or seem to want to go that route.
I was also surprised to learn that Canada Post currently has 6,300 service points across Canada, or twice the number of Tim Hortons. Already, it seems to me that there are Tim Hortons everywhere. We can't just shove this distribution network aside.
If Canada Post goes the postal bank route, it would be interesting to choose a system different from traditional banks. They could operate differently from the banks by having a presence in the rural regions, among other things.
I'm from Saint-Patrice-de-Beaurivage. To be honest, I still have the opportunity to have a credit union. However, Desjardins has closed three of them in neighbouring towns in three years.
While doing research for my presentation, I understood why there are announcements on the radio, on TV and in the newspapers for instant $500 loans that you can receive in under an hour. The borrowers are salaried employees who need their pay a day or two in advance for some reason or another, and these loans are probably offered at incredible interest rates. When I talk about doing something different, this is the kind of thing I have in mind, and this is the kind of clientele you could seek out.
You could also invest in social housing. Many indigenous communities aren't served by financial institutions. It would be interesting to do this. I also realized that immigrants pay incredible rates to transfer money to their families abroad. This might be another service that could be offered. Pressure could probably be put on the Canadian banking system, which I love and seems right to me—has the witness from Desjardins left?
In short, Canada Post could become a player that could control the exploding costs of all these banking services.
I think I'll stop there, even though I still have two pages of notes.