Government Operations Committee on April 8th, 2024

[Alexandre Brisson]

My answer is that I don't know. I'm not part of these discussions, so that's probably something I would submit to our team for a response.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

If you could get that number and report it back to the committee, that would be very much appreciated.

I have a similar question. Do you know how many executives currently work at Canada Post at the EX-01 classification or higher?

[Alexandre Brisson]

I do not see this information, so I cannot answer, but we'll add that, if possible, to our response.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you. That would very much be appreciated.

Would you have any idea as to the total amount of bonuses that have been given over the past year? If you could get that information for the committee as well, it would be very much appreciated.

As well, what is the total increase in the amount of bonuses since 2015? If you could kindly get back to the committee with all of this information, it would be very much appreciated.

Thank you very much.

[Alexandre Brisson]

We will.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

That's excellent.

Mr. Brisson, in May 2023, a report that came out from the Privacy Commissioner of Canada indicated that Canada Post was not honouring the privacy of Canadian citizens and was harvesting information from the mail and then renting it to third parties.

Do you think it's acceptable that private information is harvested from the mail of Canadians and then rented to third parties for the profit of Canada Post? Do you think that this is an acceptable use of the information of Canadians?

[Alexandre Brisson]

Let me start by saying that obviously, with the evolution of our services and information technology, we all realize there's a lot of information out there. Canada Post is absolutely committed to protecting the information of all Canadians. There's no question about that.

We did, obviously, receive the concern of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, which we responded to. The program that was in question was our Admail marketing program. What we did from the feedback is adjust that program. I can point to two examples.

The first one is that we're managing postal codes. We have the ability to aggregate purchase patterns at the postal code level. Based on feedback from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, we stopped doing that altogether, so there's no more aggregation.

We were also using public information available in telephone directories to augment our own set of data. We also stopped doing that.

Third—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, sir. That is our time.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Brisson and Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Mr. Kusmierczyk, go ahead, please.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Brisson, in your opening remarks, you described Canada Post as a lifeline for rural and remote communities. I wholeheartedly agree with your characterization of the important work of Canada Post.

I want to talk a bit about the impacts of climate change on that lifeline for rural and remote communities.

Last year, we saw what was the worst-ever record, in terms of wildfires, in Canada's history. Seventeen million hectares of forest burned in Canada. The majority of that took place in provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. Ironically, we had three premiers here two weeks ago talking about climate change and the lack of any action on their parts to address climate change. Nonetheless, 17 million hectares were burned. A recent analysis was conducted, and 90% of those wildfires were the result of climate change and drought conditions.

Have you seen the impact of climate change on the work of Canada Post and its ability to continue to deliver services to rural and remote communities? I ask that because I understand that over a six-month period last year, 150 mail delivery interruptions took place. Virtually all of the active interruptions were related to things like wildfires and floods.

Can you speak about the impacts that severe weather events and climate change are having on service delivery to rural and remote communities?

[Alexandre Brisson]

Sure.

I would start by saying that we definitely recognize that we're seeing more and more climate events, and we see the impact of climate change in Canada in different ways. Certainly, past experiences are teaching us how to respond.

The forest fires last year are probably a prime example for us. I can tell you that it certainly raised, in our operation internally, this need to build contingency plans that try to pre-empt those events, because we're expecting to see them—I'm going to say “sadly”—regularly. The question then becomes, how do we respond to those forest fires and floods that we have seen as examples? I guess the guideline for us is always that service is number one. I would say that's along the same line as the safety of our own employees. I think that's where we draw this line.

We're investing a tremendous amount of time in developing contingency plans and having opportunities for temporary post offices to serve some of the areas where people had to move after leaving their homes behind. I'm going to say that we're not only aware of and clear on the fact that we're going to have more of those in our future but also that we're preparing for it. It's forest fires, certainly, on the delivery side of things, but floods and so many other things are becoming part of our planning, going forward, because it's a reality.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Yes. Last year you had to suspend delivery service to a lot of rural and remote communities in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia because of climate change and severe weather.

Can you give us an example of communities where that service was suspended for long periods of time, and how quickly on average those service disruptions were resolved?

[Alexandre Brisson]

I think I'll turn to my colleague Michael.

[Michael Yee]

Thank you for the question.

As Alex mentioned, there were a number of instances last year.

The one thing that I would like to mention is that last year we did deploy a mobile post office to a community in British Columbia, I believe—but I would like to get back to you on that specific community—because of an interruption in service.

We noticed that with the climate issues in Nova Scotia as well, there could be a stronger need to have a more readily available fleet or a deployable capacity—

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Yee, can you provide the committee with written testimony in terms of the service delivery disruptions that took place last year? We want to know how long they lasted, and specifically those as a result of wildfires and floods.

Thank you.

[Michael Yee]

Yes, and we can characterize it, as appropriate.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Perhaps you could provide the costs as well.

We now have Mrs. Vignola for two and a half minutes, please.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Brisson, not all rural communities are remote. Some are located near major centres, but they're still facing obvious problems.

For example, in some rural areas, residences might have the same street name and number and the same postal code, but they're located in different villages. This is clearly dangerous, particularly in terms of safety. Indeed, if a fire breaks out at a home and the firefighters don't go to the right address, that can be a problem. Wrong addresses can also be a problem when it comes to mail confidentiality.

During my meetings with certain officials, solutions were proposed, but they were all rejected.

When will a full review be done to ensure that each residence has the right postal code, that residents get their mail at the right address and that first responders go to the right place?

[Alexandre Brisson]

That's a good question.

As far as I know, Canada Post is the body that establishes postal codes across Canada. We try to maintain as much stability as possible and not change postal codes, because we know that would create all kinds of problems for Canadians.

However, I know that municipal addresses fall under the jurisdiction of cities and municipalities. Canada Post is not involved in that.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

We're talking about addresses that have been around forever. These are not new addresses.

That's fine, I understand. I gather that there is no solution and that things will remain the same. Thank you very much.

Mr. Yee, you're a former partner at McKinsey & Company. Now you're in charge of modernizing sales, products and services at Canada Post.

Can you give us a few more details about your current responsibilities and tell us how this modernization will provide better services and better profitability without restricting workers' rights?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I apologize, gentlemen. We are out of time for an answer, but perhaps you can provide that in writing to the committee. If you're unsure about what was being asked, the clerk will clarify that for you.

Mr. Bachrach, go ahead, please, for two and a half minutes.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I was noting that PSPC's 2023 ministerial transition binder indicated that the cost of shipping parcels was one of the greatest challenges facing residents of rural communities. That aligns very much with what I'm hearing from residents in remote communities in northwest B.C.

I asked my awesome team to do a little research online and figure out how much more it costs to ship stuff to remote communities. They looked at a pair of Levi pants that cost $79.95 on Amazon. That's a pretty common pair of pants. Of course, we all want people to support their local retail outlets. Mr. Chair, are those the pants you wear? No?

If you ship a pair of $79.95 Levi's to Daajing Giids on Haida Gwaii, it will cost $137.14. If you ship a pair to Telegraph Creek, it will cost $140.13. If you ship a pair to Atlin, it will cost $137.14. I can't possibly believe that this reflects the costs that Canada Post is charging Amazon to deliver the parcels there. I bet you anything that I, as an individual, could go to wherever that Amazon distribution centre is and ship those pants, using Canada Post services, to those communities for a fraction of that cost.

I think what's happening is that these big companies are gouging customers in remote communities, using Canada Post postal codes as a way to radically inflate the price of shipping, to the point where common goods that these communities rely on are totally unaffordable to get there. Many of these communities don't have very many shopping opportunities. They don't have many stores, and many products are ordered by mail.

What is Canada Post doing about this problem? What can we do as parliamentarians to not have residents of our communities being gouged to such a tremendous degree?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You only have about 20 seconds to answer that, I'm afraid.

[Alexandre Brisson]

I cannot comment on the strategy retailers use to sell their products. I will not comment on that. I can comment on our pricing, and what we do. I can guarantee you that we do our best to have the best fair price for the services we provide. That includes all of our rural deliveries. We spend a tremendous amount of time to make that price as fair as we can, because we take that mission very, very seriously.