Government Operations Committee on Oct. 21st, 2016

[Jackie Pommer, Director of Operations, Brokenhead Ojibway Nation]

Thank you. My name is Jackie Pommer. I'm from the Brokenhead Ojibway Nation. I was asked to come here to be a witness on behalf of Brokenhead because of the hours that we have in the community. We had full-time service quite a while back, and it was cut back to half a day. Now we're at 9:00 to 12:00, which is very inconvenient for many of our people who work outside the community and also inside the community, because we have a hard time leaving work to go to check the mail.

The location is not an ideal location. We would prefer to see it inside one of our businesses where we can access it all the time, not just during the three hours that it's open.

Basically that's all I have. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Petrash.

[Angela Petrash, Development Corporation, Brokenhead Ojibway Nation]

Good afternoon, everybody. I want to say thank you for including Brokenhead in your tour here as you seek input from all of the communities. Thank you for choosing to hear our voice.

I'm the development corporation manager for Brokenhead and I am from the community. My statement today will focus on the business end of things and how the post office affects our business. I'll talk a little bit about the solution that we think we have found to help that situation and how I see it being of benefit to Canada Post as well, as far as service provided by Canada Post is concerned.

As Jackie said, right now the post office is in a stand-alone building. If you are familiar with an ice shack, that's what it looks like, and it's about that size. The hours of operation that the postmaster is allowed to operate out of it are Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to noon. The mailboxes are locked up, so there is no access outside of those hours to the mailboxes. If you need to buy a stamp to mail something outside of those hours, you don't have the option to do that; if you're not there between 9 a.m. and 12:00, you don't have access to it.

The solution we're proposing with our postmaster right now is to relocate the existing location inside our grocery store. This would give everybody access to their mailboxes seven days a week any time that the grocery store is open, rather than just from 9 a.m. to noon. We see this as a benefit to everybody who needs to access their mail.

We'd also like Canada Post to consider staying open longer to provide a service. I heard a little bit of the statements earlier and about questions being asked concerning online purchases. Personally, if I lived in the community and wanted to purchase something online, which I do, I would only have from 9 a.m. until noon to go to pick up my parcel. It's a deterrent for me to shop online if I can't go and pick up my parcel, because I can't be there between 9:00 and noon Monday to Friday to pick up my parcel.

I think that if we had better access, that would push online sales, which are sales for Canada Post.

I think that's about all I have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Nault, did you have anything to share?

[Sandra Nault, Housing Clerk, As an Individual]

My name is Sandra Nault. I'd like to thank you all for inviting me down here to speak on behalf of Brokenhead Ojibway Nation. I'm the housing clerk for our housing department in Brokenhead here, and we do not have access to the post office.

I have to agree with Jackie and Angela. We have a lunch break at 12 o'clock. That doesn't give us enough time to run down and check our mail. I was telling the lady in the back that we're lucky if we get to leave five minutes early to go to check the mail, and then, when we get there, sometimes it's closed and we can't.

The location is not very good, as far as I'm concerned. The post office is really small. You can probably only fit three people in it at a time, and sometimes when I go there are five or six people lined up trying to get in to check their mail.

As for the weekends, we have businesses open here on weekends. People work seven days a week, and we need access to our post office for stamps, purchases, to pick up online orders, as Angela said.

Our post office is of very poor quality.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll start now with questions from our committee members.

Mr. Whalen, you're first up.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for coming. It's great to hear from various user groups. This is our last meeting with stakeholders on our cross-country tour, so it's really a nice moment for us to finally try to tie things together.

We've heard different things here from those we've heard across the country, especially with regard to the level and the type of service that people on the Brokenhead First Nation enjoy or don't.

I want to talk a little bit about the rural moratorium. There's a policy at Canada Post that says that the moratorium on the closure of rural post offices is maintained, but that situations affecting Canada Post personnel, such as retirements, illness, death, etc., or affecting Canada Post infrastructure—fire or termination of lease—may nevertheless affect the ongoing operation of a post office.

When I read that, I would be of the view, as someone who doesn't live in a rural area, that the rural postal service is being maintained and is not going to change. But you've told me that the service has gone from full-time to half days, and now to only three hours a day. Is this essentially the same as closing the post office just through attrition? Would you prefer it if your post office simply had the full-time, permanent hours that you enjoyed just a few years ago?

[Jackie Pommer]

Personally I would prefer more accessible hours for the community to be able to go to check their mail; 9:00 to 12:00 isn't cutting it.

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

Yes, but you used to have more hours before.

[Jackie Pommer]

Yes, we did.

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

So...?

[Jackie Pommer]

Yes, I would prefer that.

[Angela Petrash]

Definitely. Who wouldn't want it to provide a better or more service? As I said in my opening statement, there's an opportunity as well for Canada Post to be open longer, to have more services, to have more hours. If she's mailing packages in the afternoon, we're putting her in a great location that has security cameras, that is in a nice work environment for her to be there longer.

Keep in mind it's not just Brokenhead that utilizes our grocery store, as well. Our business plan is based on 10,000 people, and that's the surrounding area: Beaconia, Gull Lake, Stead, and cottage country is huge out here in the summer. There are opportunities there for Canada Post to be successful as well, with the traffic.

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

When we were in Dryden a couple of weeks ago we heard from a chief who mentioned that they had received a certain stipend to pay for the postal service management there. Who manages the post office now? Is it managed through your department, or is it managed separately by Canada Post?

[Angela Petrash]

Olive is our postmaster, who is looked after by Canada Post.

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

Okay. And under the new arrangements that you're trying to negotiate now, is the proposal that she would then move over and work in the grocery store area, or is it that your department would take over and manage the operation like a franchisee?

[Angela Petrash]

No, no franchise....

In Olive's current situation, she is in a Brokenhead-owned building providing the service. Canada Post gives her a certain amount a month to cover her expenses, like operating, hydro, and such. That doesn't change; she is just in a different location.

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

Yes, but you said that it has recently changed. About how long ago was it that the operating hours for Olive were a regular 40-hour a week job?

[Jackie Pommer]

Would you say that again?

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

When was it that the post office was open normal 9 to 5 hours?

[Jackie Pommer]

I would say six years ago, or seven, or maybe a bit longer.

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

It wasn't two decades ago. It was certainly within the time frame of the rural moratorium.

When we look at the notion of franchising, we've had some discussions about certain areas of the country that used to be considered rural are no longer rural. As larger cities have expanded, they've taken in areas that now encompass rural post offices. Delivery to rural post offices is actually the most efficient delivery in the country. It's about $72 per address, whereas community mailboxes, it is $126, and home delivery is almost $300 an address.

However, this general delivery at $72 an address seems to be too low maybe. It doesn't sound like they are providing the quality of service you need.

When the service is moved into your community hub, what is your expectation on how long the counter should be open and when people should have access, not only to their own mailbox, but to the services that Canada Post should offer?

[Angela Petrash]

As far as expectation, right now Olive is there at nine. That's when she starts sorting her mail. If it were a full-time position, or maybe two part-time positions.... As I said, our grocery store is open seven days a week. The summer weekends are busy with the people who are out in the cottage country or out at the lake for the summer. We're busy on the weekends.

It would be nice for someone to be able to come in and mail a parcel on the weekend, or buy a package of stamps, or whatever other services that outlet could provide. I think we can all agree that 9 to 12 is not going to be successful for that purpose.

[Sandra Nault]

When Olive comes in, she starts at 9 o'clock in the morning and she starts to sort the mail. This is also an inconvenience to the people who are going to pick up their mail because sometimes they have to go back in an hour because she hasn't finished putting the mail in the mailboxes yet. You might as well say that she is open for business at 10 a.m., sometimes 10:30 depending on how much mail she has to sort.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Go ahead, Mr. Maguire.