I can do that. Thank you very much.
Term employees are hired for only a particular length of time and are not appointed to an indeterminate or full-time, position. They're not allotted a certain number of hours weekly. Their employment is often precarious. A lot of our employees are on call, so they can go for days without any hours.
In my office, our parcels have quadrupled. Online shopping is starting to fill the financial gap resulting from the decline of letter mail. With the growth of online shopping, it is more essential than ever to have a post office to deliver parcels to Canadians. We get cat litter, dog food, diapers, and laundry soap. We have so many things coming into the post office in rural areas, because the people have too far to go to shop. It takes too long to go purchase stuff, and it takes planning, so they're ordering an awful lot of items online and they come through the post office. That's why our volume has increased significantly.
I have a lot of at-home moms in my area, and they love the shopping—clothing, books and supplies for the schools. There are a lot of educational materials. Many people take online courses from Athabasca University, so books are constantly coming in. There are also a lot of things for home schooling, and a lot of Amazon books. We have such a high volume of parcels, and we're loving it.