Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for coming.
I had a Canada Post town hall in my riding, and it was basically dominated by postal workers. I would say that you are very passionate about Canada Post, which I admire. You guys provide a very good service. My cousin just got hired as a mail deliverer in Surrey, B.C. He's super excited. He enjoys his work. But that doesn't solve the current problem that Canada Post has. At a very macro level, I sum it up in these few points.
Transactional mail is on the decline, but you have more addresses to deliver to.
Your parcel business is increasing, right? But that doesn't offset the fact that there are more addresses to deliver to and there's less revenue coming in from transactional mail.
Then, there all these different proposals out there such as advertizing on your fleet, doing postal banking, reducing your workforce, ending community mailboxes, and doing alternate day deliver to get to a future of sustainability for the organization.
A lot of your recommendations today are based on Canada Post being profitable if you look at the numbers in a particular way versus the international accounting standards way, and we could debate that. We're not going to talk about the numbers per se, since I'm going to give a lot of deference to the fact that you do this job on a regular basis, and I don't. I'm looking at the numbers from an objective point of view, given my past skill set. I don't believe they're sustainable, but let me give you deference and say, “Okay, Canada Post is sustainable.” You're always looking to grow your revenue and reduce your costs, right?
What are the three things that you think Deepak Chopra should do to save Canada Post's future?