Government Operations Committee on Oct. 19th, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you both very much. We appreciate your comments.

We'll start with our first round of questioning, which will be seven minutes. Mr. Whalen, you're up.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you both for coming. It's great to hear the perspectives of municipalities both micro- and medium-sized, and still quite small, I guess, compared to some of the places we visit. This brings me to one of the questions that I'm trying to figure out an appropriate answer to.

In the Canada Post service charter there are two sections that deal with how far or near people need to be to their post office. There's article 10 that talks about 98% of Canadians being within 15 kilometres of a post office, and then, of course, that extra 2% could essentially be all of rural Canada, when you start to think about it. Then it goes down. Then there's been a moratorium for a couple of decades now on changes to those post offices, from closing down.... There's been no discussion about opening new ones up.

Maybe Ms. Brown you can talk to me a bit about the communities that don't currently have post office access, how far they are from their nearest communities, and whether or not those communities are growing and should be considered opportunities for an expansion of post office locations.

[Sara Brown]

I don't have these stats, but the only community I'm aware of that doesn't have a post office is adjacent to Hay River, which is the reserve there. With one or two exceptions, people in our communities cannot drive to the next community to get their mail. It's just not an option. You're often talking about hundreds of kilometres. Nobody is driving those kinds of distances.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

I think Mr. O'Reilly, who was at the previous meeting, mentioned six communities that don't currently have their own post office. Maybe you could just talk to me a little bit about whether or not your rural communities are growing. Are the populations in rural Northwest Territories growing? Are they falling?

[Sara Brown]

We don't have a rural population per se. We have isolated, remote communities. We don't have rural....

Right now, our communities are fairly static. We're not seeing a lot of growth. However, we do have a lot of potential growth with respect to the development of natural resources, because many of the mines or oil and gas companies could significantly impact those communities. They could see some change, but right now, we are fairly static.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

My next question is really for both of you. There's been some discussion about enhancing the levels of services offered at Canada Post as a way to generate more revenue—not to provide those services for free. Maybe if services were downloaded or outsourced from municipalities or regional governments, then the service delivery could be provided in the post office. Would your members, or the city of Yellowknife itself, consider moving some of your municipal services, like service offices, phone answering and whatnot, or licencing opportunities, or outsourcing those and paying Canada Post to provide those to the community? Or would you prefer to keep those jobs in-house, within your municipalities or within the capital?

[Mark Heyck]

From the perspective of a local government, I think we're generally pleased with the cost-effectiveness of our service delivery. I don't imagine there would be many instances or appropriate places where we would off-load services or contract out services to an organization like Canada Post. We obviously work closely with Canada Post on a number of things, including statutory notifications to the entire community, a weekly newsletter, billing, and those kinds of things. I don't see our moving much beyond that.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

What do you think, Ms. Brown?

[Sara Brown]

Yes, I would certainly echo that. There are economies of scale that I don't think would be realized in these smaller communities. I can't imagine a context in which that might work.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Are there types of opportunities, such as enhanced retail, banking, or hubs or drop points for rural broadband or wireless service to remote communities, that you see as potential revenue generators for Canada Post outlets? Or would they again be providing retail services or Internet services that wouldn't be self-sustaining, because it would be so cost-prohibitive to provide them anyway? It's more of a loss leader or an extra service, but again, not a revenue generator.

[Mark Heyck]

Yes. I'll speak from Yellowknife's perspective and leave it to Ms. Brown to speak for smaller communities.

I don't think it would be economically viable for that kind of thing to happen here, although I should add the notion, as I mentioned in my opening remarks—which Sara has touched on as well—of a more in-depth examination of postal banking. I do think there's probably a population, even in a community like Yellowknife, that could benefit from a service like that.

[Sara Brown]

I would certainly echo the point on postal banking.

With respect to the Internet, the challenge in the communities is not people being unable to afford access, but that that there is no access to high-speed Internet. It just doesn't exist in the community. I don't see Canada Post solving that problem then, because if they can access high-speed Internet, so could a lot of the community.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Should the Government of Canada build out a broadband network that could be resold through Canada Post, for instance? Would people buy the service if it were available?

[Sara Brown]

If that would make that service available, I would suggest there may be an opportunity there. Absolutely.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Do I still have a couple of minutes left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

You have about a minute.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

In terms of the importance of Canada Post jobs to your various communities, roughly how many Canada Post employees do you have in Yellowknife, to your knowledge, and also in the outlying municipalities and the individual post offices? Would your communities benefit from local sorting? I see that your mail is currently sorted, even the small amount of inter-regional mail, in Edmonton, and then it comes back. How much would your communities benefit from local sorting of inter-territorial mail?

[Mark Heyck]

I'd have to look into the details of how the sorting happens. We do have a sorting plant in Yellowknife, located out near the airport. My understanding is that certain mail that gets sent from Yellowknife to a community, for example, goes to Edmonton first and then comes back up north. There may be some efficiencies that could be realized in that area.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Next we have Mr. Clarke.

Mr. Clarke, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses for being here with us. That's very much appreciated, and we are all very pleased to be in Yellowknife, on this great Canadian territory.

Mr. Mayor, I have the following question for you.

You also pick up your mail from the central post office. I'm guessing that, sometimes, it must end up being a town hall meeting.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

In the City of Yellowknife, have the Canada Post services changed? My understanding is that they haven't.

[Mark Heyck]

I have not observed any major changes. As Ms. Brown mentioned in her opening remarks, we have had interruptions in service delivery at certain times, particularly with delivery to certain parts of town. That can become problematic, particularly for commercial operations in the city that are dependent on timely delivery at certain high points in the shopping season, around Christmas for example. Regarding the overall delivery model, I don't think we have observed any major changes.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

However, on a number of occasions, you have mentioned how crucial Canada Post is for your city and for the entire territory. I'm not sure whether you were a mayor at the time, but I imagine that, when you heard about the changes in other Canadian communities, you were surely very concerned. Despite the fact that there have been no changes in Yellowknife, has Canada Post contacted you somehow to tell you that the city will not be affected by its five-point action plan?

[Mark Heyck]

I don't recall a request for an action plan specifically. We did have a number of executives from Canada Post visit. I believe it was two or three years ago. I think that was shortly before the changes to delivery service models in some other parts of the country.