Thank you. I thought this committee was tough, but look at what Ian just told you there. My God, he scares you to death, doesn't he?
I'd like to make four points, if I can, in my five minutes. Much of this you've already heard, and I apologize for that, but I didn't know what other words you were going to hear.
First, Canada Post is a very sick company. If I were teaching this at the university, I would describe it as being in a death spiral. This is what we found with the Hudson's Bay Company, for instance. It's a Crown corporation backed by the Canadian government, and because no postal service in the world has failed in the last few years, I don't think it's necessarily going to be dead in six or 12 months, but clearly strong action is needed now, sooner rather than later. As I said in my little note, think months, not years in terms of the change.
Secondly, I'm fine with the changes being proposed by the federal government and the minister, who sat here just a few moments ago. Moving letter delivery to community mailboxes is fine. I've had a community mailbox for three decades. I absolutely love it. I actually view it as a service enhancement. I go away, and I don't worry about a porch poacher going through my mailboxes when I am not there.
It's the same thing with getting rid of Canada Post-owned post offices, probably in favour of franchises. I haven't been in a post office, again, for decades. I visit a Shoppers Drug Mart that has a Canada Post kiosk inside. It has longer service hours, and it operates seven days a week. That's an enhancement to the service that I used to get from Canada Post's own post office.
On slower delivery of mail from four days to seven days, I don't think most people will notice that, but I want to emphasize that while these are necessary changes, they are not sufficient.
Ms. Block pointed out some of the math problems. I'll just point out another one. If Canada Post is losing $1.5 billion this year, and you do these three things, you save $500 million. It's a step in the right direction, but you're still losing $1 billion. We have to go beyond that, which gets me to point three: Canada Post has to also generate more revenue. You can't cut your way or shrink your way to success. You have to find a way to generate more revenue.
The only bright spot is parcel mail. This is where they've lost the biggest volume, but they also have a couple of competitive advantages. Number one is that they serve every community in Canada. The private couriers have chosen to cherry-pick. They visit suburban areas and urban areas, but if you're in northern B.C. or if you're in the Magdalen Islands, it's too bad. FedEx can't get there. In fact, oddly, the private people subcontract to Canada Post at that point for the delivery.
How do you get back to a higher market share? For people sitting at this table, that means that a Crown corporation is going to have to try to take back market share from private companies. That raises lots of interesting philosophical issues.
I'm not keen on a postal bank or on postal insurance. I'm surprised Ian didn't mention this in his comments. We used to have a Canadian postal bank, and it shut a little over 60 years ago. If Canada Post were to get into the banking business, what competitive advantage would it have? It doesn't know the first thing about banking. Also, if you started a bank today, for it to generate any kind of significant profit, you'd be talking about years and years and years, and you do not have years and years and years.
About the only bright spot I could suggest is looking at other delivery partnerships. Canada Post has this army of workers out there who are trained at delivery. Are there other people who might need deliveries that they can go to?
Finally, if we're going to win back customers, if Canada Post is going to win back customers, it has to have stability. Therefore, I would agree with what the minister said around having a collective agreement. We also need a collective agreement that's not for six months or eight months or a year. We need a three-year or a four-year collective agreement, so that we can get some harmony out there as it goes....
I'll be honest with you, though. As I sit here today, I don't know how you achieve that. I suspect that if I were a member of the union, I would want to sign a collective agreement that gave me job guarantees. Bless your heart, Ian, for suggesting.... I'm not going to go to quite as big a number as him, but I think we're looking at at least 10,000 employees who need to be either encouraged to retire or perhaps given severances to go. No union is going to want to agree to that as you go forward. They want to keep every job that they have today.
I don't quite know how you're going to find that labour harmony that is so necessary, but if you can get that harmony and then you free up Canada Post to tackle some of these tough issues, I think there is a future for it.