Thank you so much for allowing me to present today.
The Surrey Board of Trade is a business organization in the city of Surrey. We attract business and support business in the city. We've been in Surrey since 1918.
The Surrey Board of Trade welcomes the opportunity to participate in the independent review of Canada Post, launched to consider viable options for postal service in Canada. We recognize that Canada Post must make changes to ensure that it remains a viable business and can fulfill its mandate of mail service to all Canadians. While the future of Canada Post will move from a greater proportion of letter mail to feature parcels, the Canadian postal service charter obligates it to deliver. To fulfill its mandate of financial self-sustainability, Canada Post, a crown corporation, faces necessary realignment. We want to let you know that we certainly recognize that.
Within our membership, we have 6,000 business member contacts representing just over 2,200 businesses that are members. We have around 80 not-for-profit charities that rely on Canada Post as an important vehicle to get their message out.
We did a survey in advance of this presentation. One specific charity sends their flyers to over 3,500 businesses in the city. They really do rely, still, on mail from Canada Post. They use the snail mail postal system to deliver their brochures, their donor forms, and return envelopes. This has been really effective for our charities.
There's another piece I want to let you know about that has been very important, not only for our board of trade and for our members but from a Canadian Chamber of Commerce perspective. That is the promotion of the VentureOne program, especially for the small business community. This is the package program that really enables our small businesses to save bottom-line costs. There are opportunities to work with businesses and to promote programs like that.
We also would like to work with Canada Post to promote business flyers and ad mail deliveries, and to really focus on parcel delivery as a cost-saving option for businesses. Canada Post must reduce operating costs. We know that future community mailbox security mechanisms need to be focused on.
The other piece I want to mention is with regard to the five-point action plan that Canada Post put forward. When the installation of the community mailboxes does take place—I know that's being integrated into new residential developments—we would ask that they do take a look at how much is being afforded in terms of the $200 fee per address. There are development costs, especially for residential developments, that could be compromised. There are ways to work with developers, especially in a growing city like Surrey. We estimate that it will be the largest city in British Columbia in less than 12 years.
The final point I would like to make is that just over 50% of our population has a mother tongue other than English. There are opportunities to work with our immigrant communities and with our refugee communities. We are the highest refugee population recipient within British Columbia. There are opportunities for Canada Post to really work with our refugee and immigrant communities.
Thank you.