Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to both of our witnesses.
This is an issue that is very much on the minds of people in communities in northwest B.C. Mr. Jones noted Bella Coola that is, of course, in the beautiful riding that I represent and relies heavily on rural post office service. Right across the northwest of British Columbia, small post offices are a lifeline for people.
I'm here today in the village of Daajing Giids on Haida Gwaii, with another rural post office. I'm using their council chambers this morning for this meeting.
Thinking about the service that both CUPW employees and rural postmasters provide and how we sustain those over time, I was really quite shocked at our last meeting to learn that 600 post offices have closed across Canada since the 1994 moratorium was put in place.
Perhaps I'll start my questioning with a question to Mr. Jones and ask him if he could lay out the mechanism by which Canada Post allows post offices to close in the face of the moratorium. How is this allowed to take place? What are the steps that we see occur? I think there are some trends that we see across rural Canada when we see communities go from having a proper rural post office, a Canada Post post office, to a mailbox in the side of the road.
Mr. Jones, could you talk a little bit about what we're seeing in terms of that erosion of service?