Government Operations Committee on May 22nd, 2020

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Dr. Tam.

I need to ask you one last question. Did you warn the federal cabinet at any time in the last decade that the NESS was not funded or mandated to amass sufficient levels of medical supplies and equipment in response to a pandemic like COVID-19?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

If you could give a yes or no answer to that, Dr. Tam, I would appreciate it.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Actually, I'll answer that question, because the conversations at cabinet are private, as the member knows.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much. That will conclude our round of questioning.

I thank you, Minister, and your officials for being here today. I appreciate it. I know you're under a tremendous amount of stress with the time that you're putting in on this crisis. We appreciate any time you can give us. You will undoubtedly be asked back again if we feel there are more questions this committee needs answered.

Committee members, we will suspend for just two or three minutes while we—

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Certainly, Mrs. Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

I'm wondering what the process is that a member initiates when a witness has mislead the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mrs. Block, I will have to say that this is something we can discuss off-line. The purpose of this committee is merely to bring witnesses forward to provide testimony. It is certainly within your purview to question or doubt the veracity of some of the comments, questions or answers, but this committee, at least in this format, does not have the ability to determine whether an answer that has been provided is true or not.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

What if an answer that has been provided is in direct opposition to an answer that was provided to this committee one week ago?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Then you can make that point, Mrs. Block. At this point in time, that's all you would be able to do. You could bring that forward as an example.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Can I do that during this point of order?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

If you can do it quickly, Mrs. Block, certainly.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I don't see what the relevance is. There is going to be a debate on this particular issue. If we want to go back and raise some issues that the opposition has also raised that are falsely claimed, we can do that as well. I don't think that's a valid point of order. There are steps that Mrs. Block can take to raise the—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Drouin, if I could—

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Drouin, but you are not the chair—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Please, Mrs. Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

—so whether or not you believe it is a point of order or not does not matter.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you, Mrs. Block, for assisting the chair. I was about to say to Mr. Drouin that I will, as chair, determine whether the point of order is relevant or not, but I have to hear the point of order first.

Mrs. Block, go ahead.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much. That's why I asked whether or not it was appropriate to raise a point of order.

Last week, Ms. May directly questioned Sally Thornton about decisions to close so many warehouses back in 2012. She asked the following question:

...was this associated with any budget cuts to the Public Health Agency of Canada? What drove a decision to shut down warehouses in locations you're not able to disclose?

Ms. Sally Thornton answered with the following:

It was not actually related to a specific budget cut, but we do look at ongoing optimization. Our goal in situating where and how many warehouses we have is driven first of all by being able to reach all the communities in Canada within 24 hours. A lot had changed since our initial structure for those nine cities—the transportation, the air, rail and trucking changed—so we were able to have the same reach with facilities in six cities. Closing down the warehouses was just dependent on how much space we needed and where they were, but no, it was not driven by a specific cut.

That is not what we heard from the minister today. I just want to raise that as a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you for your submission, Mrs. Block. The chair will take that under advisement and come back to this committee with any information or any instructions on how to proceed.

Minister, we thank you and your officials once again.

We will suspend for a couple of minutes while we prepare for our next witnesses.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We will reconvene now, colleagues. Since we are taking 15 minutes at the conclusion of this meeting for some committee business, I will ask that we have five-minute, four-minute and two-minute interventions, in that order.

First up, with a five-minute intervention, is Mr. McCauley.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Paul Cardegna]

The witness had planned to make a five-minute opening statement, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I'm sorry; you're right. My apologies, Ms. Simpson. You have five minutes for your opening statement. Please proceed.

[Jan Simpson, National President, Canadian Union of Postal Workers]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and all the members of the committee, for giving us the opportunity to present the point of view of our members in these extraordinary and worrisome times.

I first want to acknowledge that I am speaking to you from unceded Anishinabe territory.

Let me start by presenting who we are. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers represents 50,000 workers across every region of our country. The majority of our members work at Canada Post, but we also represent workers in the private sector, such as couriers, cleaners and first responders. In short, our union represents the vital front-line workers who never stopped working when confinement orders were given. I want to salute their work, their courage and their sense of community. It’s not easy going to work when you are told a vicious virus is spreading. Also, I want to thank the public for their support.

I will mostly concentrate my presentation on the issues facing our members working at Canada Post, where federal jurisdictions apply. Let’s be clear, though, that all the principles of health and safety for workers should apply to all workplaces, no matter the jurisdiction.

Our members are worried about contracting the virus at work. The anxiety level rises when you don’t know whether you will put your own family in danger when you return home. We must not treat our front-line workers as though they are expendable.

This is not theory. Up until now we have been made aware of 73 COVID-19 positive cases at Canada Post. The number of CUPW members testing positive for COVID-19 is on the rise. However, our union is encountering barriers in our ability to protect these workers, and that brings me to our first issue.

Our union has a responsibility to our members and a part to play in ensuring their safety at work. We have negotiated provisions in our collective agreements, and there are labour laws as well, that require Canada Post Corporation to fully involve the union's health and safety representatives, from beginning to end and comprehensively, when there is a health and safety hazard present. This is the only way we can assure our members that appropriate measures have been taken to protect them.

We have local joint health and safety committees and a national joint health and safety committee. Involvement and inclusion of these committees on public health agency methods, investigations, recommendations and resolutions have been very uneven from one jurisdiction to another. In some cases, Canada Post and the Public Health Agency don't properly or promptly inform or consult with our joint committees. Documentation from public health that should be shared with the joint committees is not always shared. In some cases, we don't know whether such documentation even exists or has been provided in writing to Canada Post Corporation. Our issue is a combination of Canada Post not doing enough and public health authorities not doing enough.

We know we have a productive part to play in saving lives within our membership and beyond. The government must make sure that the Public Health Agency of Canada collaborates with provincial public health agencies when intervening in a case of COVID-19 in the workplace to include health and safety representatives from the unions. Further, we urge the federal government to instruct Canada Post Corporation to be inclusive and transparent with joint health and safety committees, because lives are on the line.

The second issue I want to raise is the availability of personal protective equipment. At the beginning of the crisis, our members struggled to access the PPE they needed. We understand it was a struggle for everybody, but we had to push management to make sure our members were protected.

The situation is better now than it was before, but to this day we don’t know whether the inventory is enough to keep us going. As an example, Canada Post is now providing masks after we had been insisting for weeks, but management is bypassing our health and safety committees to prioritize their distribution. We want to make sure our members are a priority in the procurement plans of the government for all PPE. We know that we are in unprecedented times, but our central point is to make sure our workers are involved at every step in the decision-making. They are at the front lines, so they deserve nothing less.

In conclusion, governments and elected officials have to learn and continue to learn from this crisis. One thing is evident: The state has a strategic role to play.

Canada Post is a vital public service, with infrastructure present in every community. CUPW, for years, has been promoting a diversified role for the post office to better serve our communities and be central in reducing greenhouse emissions. We can use this public infrastructure, as other countries do, to provide check-ins for seniors, deliver postal banking services to underserved communities and electrify the Canada Post fleet.

We call our plan Delivering Community Power. It needs to be part of your discussion as we reopen economic activities.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to five-minute interventions, starting with Mr. McCauley.