Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Anderson, for being with us for this study and bringing your experience.
I want to set aside the concept of postal banking for a second. It's a fascinating one, and I agree with your suggestion that it would be a great benefit to small communities, including indigenous communities, across the country. However, I'm interested in the trend when it comes to the closure of rural and remote post offices. What I've seen over the past couple of years in northwest B.C. is this trend from full-service post offices with Canada Post staff to franchises, to community mailboxes. That is the way Canada Post has essentially managed its budget, or cut its budget, on the backs of rural communities.
Is that a fair assessment of the trend that we're seeing? Canada Post claims to be respecting this moratorium, and yet we see hundreds of rural post offices closing. How is that possible?