Oh, oh!
Evidence of meeting #49 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
Evidence of meeting #49 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
2:05 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
2:05 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Touché—careful with the ages.
In terms of other services that Canada Post might offer, there's been mention that it could maybe operate as an ISP, so maybe have Internet service that it would have available to sell, or maybe offer a service desk for mobile companies, or operate as a charging station for green vehicles. If someone were going to charge their Chevy Volt or their Tesla, where would they go, in your community, to do that charging? Is there a public place to get that done? You do have a gas station, maybe.
2:05 p.m.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
So there's a market for this sort of thing here if people wanted it. If you were going to have those services, would you prefer that the charging station be located at your existing gas station, or would you prefer that Canada Post undertook the capital expense to make these improvements to their location so that people would go there instead?
2:05 p.m.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
Thank you very much for being here. We have heard about isolated communities and under-serviced communities. I guess you would call yourself an under-serviced community, would you?
2:05 p.m.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
We're looking at Canada Post with its wide network. As we were driving along, I thought about the fact that the gravel roads are the only roads that lead to communities where Canada Post, with its mandate of last mile delivery, delivers to that last mile. If Canada Post were to close its office here—and once you go to a franchise store, it is privatization—would they be able to deliver that type of service to your communities?
2:05 p.m.
Chief and Council, Brokenhead Ojibway Nation
Again, in terms of privatization, we'd have to have a discussion on that.
October 21st, 2016 / 2:05 p.m.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
At the moment FedEx, UPS, and Purolator actually dump the parcels with Canada Post, and expect Canada Post because of its mandate to deliver to the last mile.
You may not have the answers now, panel members, but you can think about it and always give us some insight into what the needs are. In an under-serviced area, what are some of the things we can do? How can we use leverage with Canada Post to help the communities gain social cohesion? You talked about the youth and you talked about the seniors. How can we get them in a better place by using that network and the assets that they already have?
2:05 p.m.
Chief and Council, Brokenhead Ojibway Nation
Again a lot of it boils down to the operational, which of course includes the salaries and so forth. What would it take in order to dialogue with Canada Post in terms of the service delivery? As we say, it's only limited right now, but with longer hours...again that depends on how we set it up. Do we utilize some of our existing staff and what kind of—
2:05 p.m.
Chief and Council, Brokenhead Ojibway Nation
Well, even in terms of funding individuals and how much time would it take of them, because a person is not just going to stand there for hours and help people on and off.
2:10 p.m.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
You want an open dialogue and conversation with Canada Post because you told us that Canada Post is operating in isolation in your area. I would like to ask you a question. How many young people are there in this community?
2:10 p.m.
Chief and Council, Brokenhead Ojibway Nation
I think of the number that was mentioned probably 60% to 70% is not out of the question.
2:10 p.m.
Liberal
2:10 p.m.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
They would probably go off-reserve to go to university. If they want to access information about what university to go to, or what high school to go to, with limited access to Internet would a hub that provides that service without infringing on your nation...? If that hub says, here is the information by the provincial, federal etc., would that help?
2:10 p.m.
Chief and Council, Brokenhead Ojibway Nation
That would be an asset, however as mentioned earlier, we are trying to take things on, but if they have access to another source it only benefits them.
2:10 p.m.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
In terms of health and well-being of people, we heard that good food is so expensive. Others have used the Canada Post network to help deliver nutritional food that is not as expensive as you get at a grocery store. Would that be another area that you would look at if, it doesn't infringe on your rights?
2:10 p.m.
Chief and Council, Brokenhead Ojibway Nation
Right now we have two convenience stores, and we have the grocery store, so it's not as much of a barrier as it is up north where you have to put these through the mail. This is a totally different environment.
2:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Chief Bear, once again thank you for welcoming us into your community. It's been a tremendous experience.
I thank all of you for being here to offer your suggestions and your observations about Canada Post. Should you have any additional information or suggestions that you think would benefit our committee in our deliberations, you can contact our clerk directly. Caroline could certainly give you her coordinates, her information. Any other additional information you think would help us will certainly be included in our final report that we'll be tabling in Parliament later in November. So if you have additional information, the only thing I would ask is that you try to get it to us within the next 10 days so we'll have a chance to include that in our draft report.
Thank you once again for taking time to visit with us. We will pause until the next set of panellists come to the table.
2:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Colleagues, I think we'll start.
Welcome to our witnesses. Thank you very much for taking time out of your day to be with us today. The purpose of the meeting is of course, as you know, to discuss with you the future of Canada Post, but more specifically how it relates to this community: what services perhaps you would like to see enhanced from Canada Post and how they can better provide services to your community.
Also, if you have any recommendations overall on how Canada Post could perhaps become more financially stable and how it should move into the future, we'd love to hear your comments.
The way the process works is fairly simple. We'll ask each of you, if you have an opening statement, to try to make it in five minutes or less. After you make your opening statements, we will have a round of questions from all of our committee members. Through that process we hope to find out all of the information that you wish to transfer to us, and your testimony will help us as a committee to develop our final report, which we will be tabling in Parliament later next month.
With that brief word of opening we'll ask Ms. Pommer for an opening statement, please. If you could keep it to five minutes or less, that would be tremendous.