Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Ettinger, you mentioned...I believe you called them “multinational e-commerce giants” that are eating Canada Post's lunch in the big urban areas, and that you deliver their stuff to the north, to rural and to remote communities.
What's happening in the communities I represent is that people are trying to order things online because there are very limited retail opportunities in communities of 100 people, and they are getting gouged for shipping costs to rural places, so these global multinational e-commerce giants are getting a deal. You're giving them a bulk deal because they ship so much stuff with you, and then they're marking the products up to the point where the shipping can cost more than the product. People on Haida Gwaii have to spend $150 to get a small order from an office supply company. This is absolutely wrong.
I'm not suggesting that this is the doing of Canada Post, but these companies are using your postal codes to determine which communities to gouge. How do we stop this? What's the role of the federal government in stepping in and saying it's absolutely unacceptable that these companies are forcing rural residents, residents in remote communities and in Canada's north, to pay through the nose for a service that our government is providing via a Crown corporation funded by taxpayer dollars? How do we address this?