To the chair's point, I'll definitely keep it brief.
I believe we articulated our position last time, when we provided an opening statement, as well, as through our written submission. I won't be covering that part. I'm more than happy to answer any questions you may have.
In my opening statement, I would like to thank the committee for a second invitation. I certainly appreciate the opportunity to at least provide our thoughts and concerns regarding the discussion paper or even the Canada Post review process.
There are some concerns with the process. I don't feel like our ideas were necessarily considered by the task force. There are a number of ideas that didn't appear in the paper whatsoever. We also think it would have been beneficial to have an employee representative on the task force. I'm not too sure how the task force representatives were selected or named, but there would have been value to having some form of balance on the task force, to have someone who is coming from labour, and someone who has that history as an employee representative, to provide their perspective on certain issues.
We also feel that throughout the document, it appears that the task force would have had multiple conversations with the corporation. From one perspective, I understand that. From another perspective, when you're trying to build an objective document, it doesn't necessarily look good when you're getting a lot of information from one of the stakeholders, and the other stakeholders, the unions, only get one opportunity to provide their perspective on the issues.
Those were some areas of concern. We talked about privatization, and the way that it is written it's almost like a road map to the eventual privatization of the corporation, just with the amount of outsourcing that would be involved and some of the things that the task force brings forward.
There will be significant job losses, the elimination of many jobs, not just for the current incumbents, but also removing those jobs from the labour market. That will have an impact on the economy, and that will have an impact on future generations. Those jobs are being eliminated completely from the economy.
The other concern that we had, of course, is around the pension plan. As was discussed, the position that the unions took was exactly one that I believe Mr. Cheeseman spoke to briefly. The option that we brought forward, essentially, is seeking permanent solvency exemption. That would require some legislative change. I don't believe it's an option that's discussed in the task force discussion paper, but is certainly one we brought forward to Ms. Foote and to Bill Morneau, and it's something we certainly would want to explore further, or to have the committee at least consider.
If you have any questions, Howie and I are both here to answer any questions you might have.