Government Operations Committee on Oct. 20th, 2016

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Two-thirds, at the moment, receive door-to-door service. What percentage of your population was already on community mailboxes? Do you know?

[Holly Schick]

I have no idea.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Ms. Friesen, how about you?

[Marg Friesen]

I don't have that statistic. However, I can comment that people with disabilities who live in urban communities most often do live independently. Some do live in group home environments and some live in apartment units, so they currently receive door-to-door service.

In rural municipalities or communities, most often people live independently within their own home, and as Holly mentioned previously, that same premise affects people with disabilities in smaller communities that have a post office where someone goes to pick up their mail.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

There were suggestions made, for example, to use the post office as a community hub and to use the postal network to deliver food. You talked about nutrition and how expensive food is in remote communities, or the substandard housing. What would you like to see from Canada Post? We are all thinking “cut”, but I think there are so many advantages that we can leverage. Do you have any ideas on what you think—

[Marg Friesen]

Absolutely. I think that opens discussion for all types of potential to create a more inclusive community, and to create a community where people have opportunities to contribute in ways whereby they feel they belong to that community.

I live in a small community. I know who my neighbours are and I know the people I assist when needed.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Ms. Schick, do you want to say anything before my time is up?

[Holly Schick]

No, I don't think so.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Fair enough.

You can continue. I have 20 seconds.

[Marg Friesen]

There is already a community support network there. We just have to get the right hand talking with the left hand and create those opportunities for dialogue, for potential partnerships, within regions and within municipalities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to our two final interventions, which will be five minutes each.

Mr. McCauley, we'll go over to you.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks for joining us today.

Ms. Friesen, thank you for your advocacy work with the disadvantaged. It's wonderful to hear your passion.

I just want to chat with you a bit about the service whereby Canada Post delivers daily to a mailbox and then once a week picks it up and takes it to the home. I heard what you were saying about the difficulty of getting the documentation. This discussion has come up before.

People do require documentation, such as a handicap sticker for a car or documentation for provincial income assistance. If the system was set up so that Canada Post would be satisfied with that previous documentation, would that be suitable or helpful?

[Marg Friesen]

Of course, it would be—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I wish I could take credit for the idea, but it came from a panellist like yourself.

[Marg Friesen]

Of course it would be beneficial, because currently the people we serve with our agency are on income support programs with the provincial government.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

So the disability has already been proved somewhere along the line.

[Marg Friesen]

Yes, absolutely. They've already had to prove their disability or their chronic illness or the prolonged and enduring circumstances around their disability. That documentation already exists. That format, template, and framework already exists with our provincial government. It's not ideal. There's still room for growth there and room for improvement, but the assessment process already exists here.

As a matter of fact, we're already looking into the World Health Organization assessment process—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Actually, I have to cut you off, because I only have five minutes, but thank you.

If we can move down that road, I assume it will not be perfect but it will be better for the people you represent. If that's the case, is one day a week better, or should we look at two days a week for that? Five days a week may not be possible, especially in certain areas, but would that be more acceptable?

[Marg Friesen]

In terms of an acceptable daily mail delivery, with the potential changes to postal delivery I think that there needs to be more dialogue as to what is acceptable for people with disabilities. For us, I would say mail delivery reduced during the week to a three-day service is acceptable if we're looking at cutting back from five days. We would meet somewhere in the middle. We're open to that.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Great. Thanks a lot, and thanks again for your advocacy.

Mr. Nixon, congratulations on International Credit Union Day. We had Desjardins earlier, and they commented about your credit union system as well as Coast Capital, whom I used to deal with, and so congratulations.

We talked a lot about postal banking. I just want to get some feedback.

Some parties have presented it as a panacea to fix all that ails you financially. One question was if they would be going to do mortgages and securities, but it was, no, no, we'll just cash cheques.

In your opinion, could you make enough money out of a stand-alone outlet to justify all the capital, add-on trade, and cash you'd have to have on hand, and infrastructure set-up, staffing, etc., to overcome hundreds of millions of dollars in potential profit loss down the road for Canada Post just by doing simple banking services?

[Keith Nixon]

Let me start by acknowledging that the adoption of technology is not as easy it sounds for everybody. To the other presenters, I would acknowledge that technology is not the answer for everything either, but it's certainly the trend.

In terms of cheque cashing, to use that as an example, we see the use of cheques rapidly declining. Primarily it's being done through direct electronic deposit or by other means. We've started to move in the direction of using the smart phone for taking a picture of a cheque for deposit—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We're going to get cut off, but I want to comment that it's great that you're doing the mobile banking. ATB and CIBC do that. Desjardins had a great thing in having mobile training on the technology for seniors and the less abled.

Again, thank you for everything you're doing. I'm out of time. I'm sorry to cut you off there.

[Keith Nixon]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Our final intervention is from Ms. Shanahan, for five minutes, please.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Just to continue on that line, we've heard some interesting testimony about the history of postal banking with Canada Post.

Mr. Nixon, can you tell us what you know about it and about the fact that postal banking, up until it was discontinued in 1968, was actually quite profitable? What's the main difference? Why would it not be profitable now?

In fact, in your presentation you were concerned about unfair competition, so you're not afraid that it's going to be unprofitable; it's more that they'll succeed too well and impede the private sector.