Government Operations Committee on June 18th, 2026

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Good morning, everyone. We are in session. Welcome to meeting number 47 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, known, of course, as the mighty OGGO.

We welcome back our friends from Canada Post.

Thanks for joining us today.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I can't hear the interpretation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Is there anyone here? Oh, the translators are remote today.

Anyway, welcome back, Mr. Ettinger and team. The floor is yours for an opening statement.

Go ahead, sir.

[Doug Ettinger, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Post Corporation]

Good morning, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Doug Ettinger. I'm the president and CEO of Canada Post. With me are my colleagues Alexandre Brisson, chief operating officer, and Rindala El-Hage, chief financial officer.

Thank you for opportunity to join you today to talk about our major transformation.

Before we get to your questions, I'd like to share a quick update. First, we have new ratified collective agreements in place with our employees represented by CUPW. We're very, very pleased with that. Our employees voted overwhelmingly in favour of the agreements—in fact, 89% for the urban unit and almost 86% for the rural unit—which will remain in effect until end of January 2029. These are not status quo agreements. They recognize that Canada Post needs to change. For example, we can now move forward with affordable weekend parcel delivery with our new part-time staffing model in order to be more competitive in the marketplace.

For customers, it means that we can provide the certainty needed to rebuild their trust and hopefully win back their support, which we are actively working on right now. For small businesses that depend on us, it means they can ship with confidence as we find new ways to help them grow their businesses and thrive. For employees, it means they have certainty and stability as we move forward with our transformation.

The new agreements bring us stability.

It's very busy at Canada Post right now, as we're rebuilding the business and also actively transforming the company.

In previous discussions, you asked about our difficult financial situation and how it got to this point. The reality is that for the last 20 years Canada Post has faced the same structural challenges confronting every western postal operator: persistent letter mail erosion, driven by digital substitution and coupled with rising per unit delivery costs as the number of addresses continues to grow. Obviously, you have a problem if you're faced with declining revenue and increasing costs.

We serve all Canadians, and we're very, very proud to do so. However, compared to our counterparts in other countries, we have the additional costs and complexities of serving a population in all corners of the world's second-largest land mass; plus, our population density is amongst the lowest in the world. That is a very bad combination in logistics. Serving all Canadians is our mandate. It also requires us to do so on a self-sustaining financial basis. It's basically a user-pay system, but as Canadians started to change their habits years ago, the mandate fell out of balance. Numerous studies have been completed over the years, and they all concluded that, without major changes, Canada Post was heading for a fiscal cliff.

The situation was unsustainable.

Unfortunately, the policy and regulatory fetters remained in place as successive governments did not prioritize the need for change. The inevitable losses began to mount. That's why we are incredibly grateful to Minister Lightbound and the government, who understand how important the postal service is to Canadians and that it needs to change to serve a stronger, more economically resilient country.

With the lifting of moratoriums on community mailboxes and our post office network and with other changes, we now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to renew and re-establish Canada Post to serve the growing needs of our country. The work we have been doing to get ready for this, such as building our processing and our IT capacity, means we are very ready and already taking action in the marketplace.

Let me be clear, though: To properly transform, some things are going to have to change. However, we can do so in a way that creates a better service tailored to the current and modern needs of a growing country.

This is a unique opportunity to improve our services.

Let me give you some examples.

By converting the remaining households to community mailboxes, nearly all mail and parcels delivered by Canada Post will be delivered under lock and key, increasing security and convenience while reducing our delivery costs and focusing real support on those who need the assistance.

With the ability to finally look at our post office network through today’s lens and begin to make changes, we can better focus resources where they are needed the most.

Without the ability to change since 1994, our post office network has fallen out of balance. From a service standpoint, we’re overbuilt in urban areas and challenged in rural communities, where the service is really needed the most.

We need to take steps to rebalance our post office network. That means some post offices in over-serviced areas will have to close in order for us to invest in service improvements and address long-standing challenges in some rural, remote and northern communities.

We can certainly discuss this in more detail, and I'm sure we will, but these examples demonstrate our commitment to introduce new innovations and improve productivity, which will allow us to prioritize investments and hopefully improve a vital service for rural, remote and northern communities that only Canada Post serves.

I look forward to your questions, but let me leave you with this. As those past studies all predicted, the fiscal cliff did arrive for Canada Post. It arrived some time ago. It’s a situation that we take very seriously. We’re just as concerned by our losses as you are, if not more so. We can’t change the past, but I want to reassure you that we are 100% focused on the future and our transformation. We now have the responsibility and the accountability to turn the corner, provide a better service and return to financial sustainability.

It’s a very big job, but we have an incredibly talented and determined team that will deliver for Canadians—and ensure we pay them back for the loans as quickly as possible.

The story of where we are today and how we got here is well documented, but judge us on our performance moving forward as we write a new, exciting, historic chapter—a TSN turning point, for those sports fans in the crowd—for Canada’s postal service.

For the postal service, there will be a before and an after.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Mr. Ettinger.

We'll start with Mrs. Block, but, colleagues, before we do, we have Mr. Ettinger for a full two hours. I'm going to be, as we often are, a bit loose with our time to allow a proper response, but if you're asking an open question, try to leave at least 30 seconds. We'll allow him extra time because we have so much, but don't ask a question with two seconds left and expect us to give an extra minute. Just keep an eye on that, and we'll be as flexible as we can with everyone.

Mrs. Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Ettinger, for joining us today, and thank you to your colleagues as well.

Welcome back. I think we've seen you a few times in the last 18 months.

Your Q1 report for this year provides an update on page 5 of the transformation plan. We know that Canada Post submitted the plan to Minister Lightbound eight months ago, and although you were given permission to begin consultations on your plan, it has still not been approved. Is that correct?

[Doug Ettinger]

To my knowledge, that is correct.

We submitted the plan on November 7 to the minister and PSPC. There has been a lot of conversation, a lot of clarification and a lot of new information provided, and as you noted, we are moving forward on a couple of the core principles of that: community mailboxes and assessing our post office portfolio out in the marketplace.

We've started that. We're confident that the plan is a very good plan. There are no surprises in there. I think I said that the last time I was here. There won't be anything in there that you wouldn't have thought of already, I'm sure, especially given the study this group has done on it. We're very confident, but we're still waiting for support to move further.

We're ready. We've been preparing in the background, and we have a full transformation team ready to go.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

There was a real sense of urgency last fall, when the minister announced that some of the moratoriums were going to be lifted and, I guess, demanded a transformation plan within 45 days. It's a little troubling that it's taken eight months and counting for you to get approval from the minister.

Can you tell us how long consultations will last on this transformation plan?

[Doug Ettinger]

That's a great question. Unfortunately, I don't know that. I think you may want to ask the minister that. Again, we're in very close conversations about all of the details of it and clarifying it.

We have our team. While there was space over the last several months, we've created 10 work streams in our transformation program that are ready to go. Two of the bigger ones are the ones that are under way. We have the community mailboxes. We've announced two waves of those already. We've announced all of the ones that are planned for next year. There are another 500,000 addresses. With that alone, which will take a few years—it's not instant coffee; it's not going to happen overnight—there will be savings of between $400 million and $500 million a year, plus we'll reduce injuries and GHGs, etc.

I think the two programs are really important in this overall transformation.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

In your opening remarks, you talked about Canada Post's excitement about writing a new and exciting chapter. Your Q3 report in 2025 said you will need amendments to the postal service charter. Have those amendments taken place?

[Doug Ettinger]

No, but we are working on those diligently with the department. We're going back and forth on those. Those are amendments regarding letter mail that will change letter mail timing across the country. It doesn't mean that we won't be delivering letter mail on a regular basis, but we will have more time. Rather than put a lot of the letter mail in air cargo, we're going to be able to put it on the ground, save quite a bit of money and help save the environment a little.

We're pretty comfortable that we're working closely with the government to get alignment on that. It has not been approved, but the teams are very focused. We have proposals that we feel pretty good about right now.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

That's another question for the minister, perhaps.

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

When you visited this committee last, the chair asked if you had the ability to close post offices in the middle of urban cities. You said you would take direction from the government, but, ultimately, you could do it yourself.

Has the minister given you direction on what should constitute a rural post office? I think we've talked quite a bit about what the definition of a rural post office is.

[Doug Ettinger]

That's a really good point. There was really no definition of rural. From 1994, there was a list of post offices that were not to be closed. That moratorium is off.

I will stress that we're approaching this very thoughtfully. The rural ones are even more important. There isn't a divide between rural and urban, but we're really going to look at it with a community lens. We're not going to do a one-off and not look at the surrounding post offices and what the community needs. We're going to consult with the community, get their feedback and see how they're using the post office. People have really changed the way they use the post office since then. Before, they were buying a lot of stuff at the post office, like money orders and things like that. Now, they're dropping off their parcels and they're dropping off their returns—

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you.

[Doug Ettinger]

—so it's very different.

I'm sorry. I was going on.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

No. Thank you for your explanation.

I would just say I know many rural communities are feeling very anxious about the announcement that was made almost a year ago, so I think coming up with that definition and conducting those consultations sooner, rather than later, would be very important to provide some certainty.

[Doug Ettinger]

I totally agree with you. That is our intent. Recently, we've been to the federations of municipalities meetings—both the Canadian one and the Quebec one. We had a booth there, and we were consulting with all of the mayors who were there. We're going to be very thoughtful about that.

If a rural post office is the only one in a certain area, even if its revenue is low or its profitability is poor, there's a very good chance it's going to stay where it is.

I was going to add one thing, but I won't.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Go ahead.

[Doug Ettinger]

I was going to add that in urban areas—and this is not always the case—we have a lot of overlap. We have a lot of duplication of dealer post offices and our own corporate post offices. That's the first wave. That's where we'll go first to try to address some duplication. We're over-serviced in those areas, and we're under-serviced in a lot. We'll be able to redeploy some of those resources to the areas that really need it, which is what I was getting at in my opening comments.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Sudds, go ahead.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Ettinger, and your team, for being with us today.

I would like to build on the questions from my colleague.

Back in September 2025, Minister Lightbound announced a series of measures aimed at consolidating underutilized Canada Post offices and reducing operating costs.

I recently was alerted to a notification in my community around QR codes being provided or stationed at four post office locations, three of which are urban and one is rural, in my community that are intended, I believe, to give constituents the opportunity to provide feedback on this path forward. Can you speak a bit about what that entails, please?

[Doug Ettinger]

Thank you. That's an important question.

Building on my last answer, we're very empathetic to the rural areas and the urban areas. We don't want to move too quickly and surprise people. We want to get their feedback. That is one of our first measures. The QR code takes them online where there's a survey to find out how they're using the post office, what gaps they see, if there are other services they could use, and if they're not using the post office, why that is happening. It's our first effort to get broad feedback. That's across the country, so we want to get broad feedback from Canadians and put that feedback into our program as we go forward.

Essentially, it's going to boil down to listening to the communities, seeing what they have. If there are five little post offices within 10 kilometres, probably that's an area we're going to be looking to close one or more, but we'll look at maybe increasing the hours in another one or offering other services in another one.

Our goal here is to enhance service. We can't cut our way to success on this, absolutely not. Our focus...and this is what it boils down to. If consumers don't want to use Canada Post, we can do all the cutting we want in the world and it's not going to matter. We need to create a customer service environment—and we're very focused on this—where they want to use us and they can rely on us.

There are a whole bunch of innovations in the pipeline, which I might get a chance to highlight a little bit. We haven't been sitting around for the last couple of years, though. We've been just.... There's pent-up demand to get these programs out in the marketplace, and they are all about the customer and what works for them. They've changed their needs from 30 years ago. It's time that we modernized the post office network.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata, ON]

That's incredible. You've been here a number of times over this last session, and it strikes me that you appear to be much more positive and optimistic in this meeting so far today, which is great to see.

Maybe I'll give you that opportunity. You seem to have some ideas and some, as you've said, innovation in the pipeline. I'd love to hear what that entails.

[Doug Ettinger]

Thank you for that opportunity. I'll get to that really quickly so I don't chew up too much time.

First of all, the announcement last fall, taking the fetters off of us that have been there for a long time, was amazing. We're so pleased and grateful that the government decided to take this seriously for the good of Canada and not just for the sake of doing it. We connect all Canadians. We're in every community. We live in every community. Who's better than us to do a better job for Canadians, especially right now?

The other thing is that the agreement we were able to negotiate at the table with the union was a breakthrough for both parties. We both had some give-and-take in that process. It's not a perfect deal, but it's a transformative deal for the organization going forward. Now, as I said, we can do weekend delivery. We can compete with the big, global players that are out there.

Also in the works are some things that I've been excited about for some time. We're going to launch a new online marketplace for Canadian retailers and Canadian small businesses. It's going to be very friendly, with low fees and low costs. It's really aimed at small businesses and trying to help Canadian small businesses get up and running.

We're also going to announce home pickup at consumers' homes for parcels they want to ship—I'm referring to small businesses—and returns. They may have ordered three T-shirts and they only want to keep one, so we're going to do that.

I'm very excited, because we were tough on small businesses. I want to apologize to Canadians and small businesses for the tough times over the last two years. We were in disruption for over 220 days over the last two years with a variety of issues. They took it hard. We owe them and we need to earn back their trust. We're going to have a new program on small businesses. There's a lot coming this fall. There's some new pricing for them, how to set up a website, insight and value-added kinds of programs. We want to partner with small businesses. That's our sweet spot. We partnered with Shopify when they were very small, way back in the day, and we'd like to see more Shopifys around Canada.

There's more. Some aren't quite ready for prime time yet, but we're going to have a lot of announcements in the fall. They won't be just on transformation, but on real customer innovations that are going to make it easier for them to work with us.

Thank you.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata, ON]

That's incredible. Thank you.

That's my time. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You're at the six-minute mark.

Madam Gaudreau.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, Mr. Ettinger. Thank you for being here.

I have to tell you that I'm uncomfortable. You received the mandate on September 25, 2025. It is now June 18, 2026. Today is the last day of parliamentary business. This committee has waited until now to get some interesting information. You are appearing before us during one of the biggest transformations at Canada Post in a generation, as you said.

Nonetheless, parliamentarians, municipalities, workers and citizens still don't have a detailed plan of what is being implemented. There are just press releases and media advisories that we get on our iPhones. It's quite disappointing for the partners. We don't have a clear timeline. There is no public follow-up on the recommendations from the Kaplan report. We don't have a clear picture of the measures that have already been taken and those that are yet to come. You mentioned that.

Why do we have to chase down information all the time?

[Doug Ettinger]

Thank you for your question.

That's a good question.

I totally understand what you're saying. I feel for you and your riding, which could have a number of changes.

I can assure you that we want to move with the support of the communities. Our team has engaged in the communities. As I said, we were at the recent conferences for both the Quebec federation of municipalities and the Canadian one. We got a lot of feedback there. We're hearing from mayors. I'm hearing from mayors.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Ettinger, my concern is not just about the content. It's also the way it's being conducted. It seems that some decisions are being made behind closed doors or are revealed in dribs and drabs when they may already have been made.

Do you understand why many observers feel that this transformation is taking place behind the scenes rather than in the open?

Can you provide the committee with a comprehensive document today that includes all of the recommendations from the Kaplan report that you will be implementing, their current status, their timeline for implementation, the consultations done, in detail, as well as the expected impact on services, workers and communities?

[Doug Ettinger]

Thank you.

Again, I fully understand. Our guiding principles for this transformation are to enhance service, make changes with respect, be thoughtful, be flexible, keep stakeholders apprised and engaged and protect—

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Ettinger, the answer is yes or no. Will you table all of that with the committee?

[Doug Ettinger]

Everything that has been approved for us has been announced.

On the community mailboxes, the first 600,000 addresses and 51 communities have been released. Our team is working with all of those communities to figure out how best to do it, and we have a process for that.

On the post offices, we have started our assessment of the various regions around Canada. We're doing an assessment based on a community lens—

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

How is it that—

[Doug Ettinger]

We're also starting our research with the surveys to customers.

You may want to follow up with the government.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

With all due respect, Mr. Ettinger, this is Parliament. Canada Post is a Crown corporation.

I meet regularly with mayors, reeves and elected municipal officials, and that's not what they're saying. They're wondering what's going to happen. They're looking for information. Even we, as parliamentarians, are asking questions without getting a clear answer.

Can we have the respect of a Crown corporation? I heard the word “business”. It's not a business.

Will you commit today to providing this committee and parliamentarians with all the details of the current reform?

[Doug Ettinger]

That is under the purview of our department, PSPC. It has not been fully approved. That's my understanding. We talk to the government frequently about that. I can't give that today.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

When will you do it?

[Doug Ettinger]

I cannot give that to you today, but rest assured we are working hard on it. We have a plan that's been submitted.

There are no surprises in that plan. It is all of the things that other countries around the world have faced and what they're doing, and all of the things we need. We're going to do it very thoughtfully, with Canadians, and make sure that we're in the communities.

That's all I can say here today.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

That's really disappointing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

We'll go to Mr. Stevenson for five.

Welcome to OGGO, Mr. Stevenson.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you. This is my first time here at OGGO. It's my pleasure.

I've been talking to my colleagues, and my whole reason for coming today is that you guys are here.

I was quite pleased that you were in a positive mood earlier, and I hope you can keep that going. I have several questions. What I'll do is ask a bunch of questions so that you can decide if somebody else needs to answer them. Then I'll go back through the reason I have them. If you don't get through all of them, maybe you can provide the answers in writing.

To start with, how many customers or postal recipients would you have in a postal code? How big of a geographic area would you say you have for a definition of a postal code? What range of numbers of customers would there be? Certain postal codes have from 20 to 1,000 or 10,000. How many people are actually going to fit in there? What are the criteria for Canada Post having to create a new postal code for a certain area? If you have that, is it publicly available? Can the public find out about that? If a citizen, a company or a neighbourhood would like to have their own postal code for whatever reason—and I'll get into that—how do they go about that? What's the process? Those are the questions I have to start with.

In today's digital age, postal codes have become very important to Canadians, to their lives. It affects their banking, financing, insurance and many government programs. With insurance, rates will often be based on the crime rate in a certain area, and then they'll say their insurance rate will be a certain amount. If they have a fire department in the postal code, then their insurance rates are.... The postal code can be affected in various different areas.

One of the programs that you'll probably recall was very dependent.... In my riding of Yellowhead, for probably 90% plus, everybody's driving to the post office to get their mail. Delivery is not the issue. It's more about where they are. Previous to last year, before the last election, the consumer carbon tax rebate was based on where you.... If you filed your income taxes, there was a checkbox for whether you were urban or rural, and they would often correlate that with your postal code. In my riding, there is a specific area—Waiparous, Ghost Lake and Ghost valley—directly west of Cochrane. They have to drive 20 to 40 minutes to get to Cochrane where their mail is. That's not the issue for them.

When you look specifically at that carbon tax one, and many other programs and social services, Cochrane fits with the Calgary urban riding. They live outside of that. They technically should have received the 10% bonus because of living in the rural area. Their postal code often would have them denied that, and it was a major fight. Having a postal code out in that area, even if it was still in Cochrane, the delivery postal code would actually make the difference for them.

The people of that area created a petition last year. I presented it in the House. I also gave it to the minister. I got no response from the minister. It didn't get to as high a level as you, but I sent it to Canada Post. The response that we got from Canada Post was that these people get postal delivery, and that's as far as they're going to go for now.

However, today, with your remarks, I'm encouraged that you're saying you're really looking at where they're going to have post offices and where they'll have delivery. First of all, I'm wondering if you actually got any response from the minister on this. I somehow doubt it.

Perhaps you could elaborate on what that process will look like going forward. How can we help these people so that they can get their own postal code?

[Doug Ettinger]

That's understood. Thank you. There are a lot of good questions in there.

I apologize, but I have to admit that this is the first time I have heard of this.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Yes, I assumed that. That's why I'm here and all gung-ho.

[Doug Ettinger]

You could probably read my body language very carefully.

We will take that back and look at it. There may be some people behind me who work on all of these issues. I'll make sure we get back to you, sir, and give you.... I'm not sure how the process works.

With the changes to post offices that we're potentially looking at over time, there's no plan to change postal codes. It was more about post offices. From time to time, we do get questions on why one area is deemed urban and one is deemed rural and they're very close to one another. That is the kind of question I've received before. We do take a look at those because sometimes it's deemed to be unfair. It may even be that shipping costs are different between rural and urban. That is the kind of question I've heard before. We do look into those and see what we can do, if it's appropriate to change them, because communities change.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Yes. That's exactly it. I know that in Cochrane, where they get their mail—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Mr. Stevenson, you've used up the time for a response.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I'm sorry.

[Doug Ettinger]

We got it. We got it. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Ms. Rochefort.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Ettinger, the last time you came before the committee, I was delighted that you made a robust commitment with respect to the accommodation program. In my riding especially, there are a lot of rural communities and older citizens. Actually, we played that clip on my social media, and I did get questions from a couple of people. They asked whether they would need a doctor's certificate.

I'm wondering if you've given further reflection on what a robust accommodation program would look like.

[Doug Ettinger]

I heard you on that loud and clear. We've heard from a lot of Canadians that the accommodation program needs to be a lot better than it is. My commitment, and our commitment, is to do that. We've already done some things. We've put it online. It's easy to navigate.

We recognize that service comes first in this process, but safety is right there with it. For a lot of seniors—I'm in that category now, so I can speak for myself—it needs to be convenient. If people have functional challenges, we need to give them whatever support they need. Sometimes it's just that it's easier to pull the tray out of the community mailbox, or it could be a braille tray for those who are blind or close to that. It could be that the level needs to be changed for people who are in a wheelchair or whatever. Certainly, if people have good reason that they can't physically get there, we're not going to make it overly difficult for them. Maybe in the past we were very difficult on that.

Right now 17,000 households use that. We're going to be promoting it more. We're going to make sure that people understand that it's critical to this. Again, we'll be consulting with communities, but if people are concerned, I'm very optimistic that we can provide once- or twice-a-week delivery, if that's what somebody needs. Most people don't need their letter mail more than once a week these days. Whatever is required, within reason, we'll make sure we address those concerns. It really is a top priority in this whole thing. If we don't get that right, we've got bigger problems. We know that.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

I also appreciate your comments with respect to the consultation you're doing with communities. We heard from mayors. They came before us and they said how important it is for you to consult. I think hearing that you're doing this before you roll out all your plans is important. That's why we're doing the consultation. As you bring forward your plans, you need to have that information. That's what I very much understood.

At the same time, as my colleague Madam Gaudreau mentioned, in rural communities there is a concern. For example, in my community, people in small towns—Astorville, Callander, Mattawa, Temagami—worry about their post offices and so on. I appreciated the remarks you made in your opening comments. I'm wondering whether you could reiterate them or maybe expand on them.

[Doug Ettinger]

I will. Thank you. It's another great question.

Again, rural, remote and indigenous communities are a priority for us. We're going to protect the service in those areas. I know how important they are. I grew up in a small town in Nova Scotia. I've lived in small towns across Canada. I understand how important they are. They can be the hub of the little community, depending. We're going to be very thoughtful about how we do that.

To the earlier questions, we have not made any decisions, even internally, on which post offices we think should stay or go. We're working on making sure we have the right program to engage with people and get public input. That was referred to earlier. We're out there now with surveys, online surveys and posters in all the post offices: Here's a QR code; go to this and give us your feedback. We'll address things.

We're going to look through a community lens, a regional lens. As I said earlier, if there are lots of post offices in a small area, well, that's probably one we'll look at. But for smaller areas like the one I grew up in, where they need the post office, and need it maybe even more in some ways, we will be very sensitive to that. We'll look at other factors as well. We'll get this research back from Canadians and we'll have their feedback. We'll look at traffic in these stores, at revenue in these stores and at the stores nearby. We'll look at all the feedback and make decisions thoughtfully.

Nothing has been decided upon yet, but we're getting the process out there so that we can hear from Canadians.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

I'm almost out of time, but would you say that is what's holding back the final information from the minister?

[Doug Ettinger]

I don't really know. Again, I'm not privy to that, but certainly they're aware of our approach of how we would like to go about this, and we've started the early consultations. We're all very sensitive to this. No one wants to lose a post office, and we understand that. We have to do this one step at a time.

Thank you.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

We'll go back now to Madam Gaudreau.

Go ahead, please.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Ettinger, we're talking about consultations.

What consultations have been held to date?

[Doug Ettinger]

Thank you for your question.

We have put out surveys. We've put posters in post offices across Canada, and customers will be able to see those. There's a QR code that they can use to go online, where there's a questionnaire. It's a pretty straightforward general questionnaire: How do you use the post office? What are the gaps? What are you missing here? Why don't you use—

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

That's for the general public.

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

What about municipalities?

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes.

Okay, I'm sorry. Thank you.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Could you provide us with a list of the partners who have been consulted since the reform began?

[Doug Ettinger]

Again, we have a full community relations team out in the communities across Canada. They're meeting with MPs. They're meeting with local groups. We're meeting with all of those. Recently we've been meeting with the municipalities as well, the federations of municipalities. We're getting the feedback.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

That's why we need the list. I live in a rural community. Last week, two mayors reached out to me. They're looking for information and they don't have any, or very little.

That said, we can provide information proactively. I learned today that the general public is looking for information. There are partners who are asking a specific question, and they don't know where we stand. They also don't know the criteria that will be used. They can contribute, but it seems they aren't being consulted.

What I understand, then, is that it's not finished. I understand that you consulted the Union des municipalités du Québec and the Fédération québécoise des municipalités. That's a good start.

In the coming weeks, though, do you plan to meet with representatives from the regions?

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes, absolutely.

I'll use the example of the community mailboxes. We put a full binder together for all of the mayors in the communities and for their municipal planning departments. Our team has presented the information to them. We're consulting with them. We're going to use the very same model with post offices.

If you contact those same mayors, I think they'll tell you that, for the most part, they have received a binder on how the process is going to work, the consultation. We even proposed potential locations.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Is it ready?

Can we see it?

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes.

It's out there. It's on community mailboxes, not specifically on post offices.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

It covers four million addresses in Canada, I believe. That's what we were told.

Is that correct?

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes, that's right. We'll use the same approach, which will be, I think, what your mayors quite rightfully are asking for.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I'm an entrepreneur. My business is my money. We're talking about a public service here. Communities right across this country want accountability.

Since Canada Post is a Crown corporation, as I said, I expected the process to include a dialogue with regional representatives so they feel part of the process. I hope to see that in the coming weeks. We have to be informed.

At the end of the day, we're being told that it's not being managed as a Crown corporation. Information is not disclosed. In my riding, there are people from 39 municipalities watching you right now. They say it makes no sense.

I have one last quick question.

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes, thank you.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Can you tell us today whether, over the past 12 months, Canada Post has communicated with all the municipalities potentially affected by any current or potential changes to the postal network and by the lifting of the moratorium?

Has there been an official letter sent to those municipalities?

[Doug Ettinger]

The community mailboxes program is really the only full program we have approval for right now. As I said, we've contacted all of those communities. There are 51 communities with over 600,000 addresses that will be converted to community mailboxes. They have been contacted. We are in motion with them, working through it, hearing from them and getting their feedback.

As you're saying, quite rightly, we have not done that with the post offices yet because we're not quite ready, but as soon as we're ready and we have full approval, you'll be the first one to receive the list and the communities. I promise you that.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I appreciate that, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I suggest you keep that promise, sir.

Mrs. Jansen.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Mr. Ettinger, Canada Post needs another $1 billion in taxpayer support to remain operational. At the same time, I understand that the corporation has committed itself to a $1-billion net-zero transformation.

I'm wondering whether the priority going forward will be becoming profitable or meeting climate targets. Your plan estimates $1 billion to transition Canada Post to a low-carbon operating model. Is that still your estimate?

[Doug Ettinger]

Our goal is—

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I was looking for a yes-or-no answer. Is that still your estimate?

[Doug Ettinger]

We want to get our north star to get to break-even over the next five years. That's the answer from a financial point of view.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I asked if your estimate for the transition to low carbon is still $1 billion.

[Doug Ettinger]

We've had to pause and defer quite a few of our environmental programs, for example, electric vehicles, due to affordability.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay. That's great.

I'd like to follow up with a few more questions.

Of that $1 billion, how much has already been spent?

Perhaps Ms. El-Hage knows.

[Doug Ettinger]

Please.

[Rindala El-Hage, Chief Financial Officer, Canada Post Corporation]

Thank you, Doug.

Thank you for the question.

As Doug mentioned, right now, our focus is absolutely—

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I'm wondering how much has been spent.

[Rindala El-Hage]

I don't have that particular dollar figure offhand, but we can get it to you.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

It would be great if you could do that. Thank you.

[Rindala El-Hage]

We are continuing those investments.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I have a few questions in relation to that.

Does the $1-billion estimate include the full cost of electrifying 100% of the fleet by 2040, as you have in your transition plan?

[Rindala El-Hage]

The envelope that was previously released includes that. Yes.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

How much have you spent to date, while you were having struggles, on electric vehicles?

[Rindala El-Hage]

As Doug iterated, we had to delay those investments.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

You did not buy electric vehicles.

[Rindala El-Hage]

Not to the level we had committed to. We had to stop it due—

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Did you put in any charging infrastructure?

[Rindala El-Hage]

At this point in time, we have had to delay that.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Did you put in place any renewable electricity contracts?

[Rindala El-Hage]

We put some of those—

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

How much was that?

[Rindala El-Hage]

I don't have that off the top of my head.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Could you get that to us?

[Rindala El-Hage]

I can, for sure.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

What about carbon offsets?

[Rindala El-Hage]

We spent some money on that—

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Can you tell us how much?

[Rindala El-Hage]

We can get you that information.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

What about consultants for this?

[Rindala El-Hage]

The majority of the work has been done in-house. Internally, we have a team looking after this.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

What about climate reporting and compliance costs?

[Rindala El-Hage]

We have a great team internally that produces our sustainability reporting. That is available on our website.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I looked at your report, and it looked very fancy. If you did it with consultants, it looks as if it would be expensive.

Has Canada Post updated the estimate to account for inflation and higher capital costs? Are you looking at that with your internal people?

[Rindala El-Hage]

Absolutely. That's part of our yearly processes.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

You've updated it.

[Rindala El-Hage]

Do you mean regular capital expenditures or specifically related to this?

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I mean specifically related to this.

[Rindala El-Hage]

We update that every year, absolutely.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

We'd like to get those numbers, then.

How about the unexpected repair and maintenance cost on the electric fleet? Have you guys looked at that at all?

[Rindala El-Hage]

At this point in time, because we have such a small fleet, it is part of our estimates, but it is not significant.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

How big is the fleet?

[Doug Ettinger]

It's 100 electric vehicles.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay.

What is the largest single expenditure remaining under net zero? Is it pretty much everything?

[Rindala El-Hage]

The largest expenditure would be the buildings and the fleet, for sure.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Your report estimates decarbonization potentially saving up to $85 million annually long term. Have those projections been independently validated?

[Rindala El-Hage]

I can get back to you on that, but yes, absolutely, we do have a team that validates that.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

How many years would it take for the projected savings to recover the estimated $1-billion investment?

[Rindala El-Hage]

From memory, that's within the 10-year view that we have. That envelope that you're talking about is a 10-year view.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay.

At the same time that the board approved net zero, was Canada Post already warning about its long-term financial sustainability?

[Rindala El-Hage]

At that point in time, we knew that we had some of the historic challenges and constraints that we had to work on, but we weren't in the situation that we are today.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Did the minister responsible for Canada Post review and approve those transition plans while you knew that you were already struggling?

[Rindala El-Hage]

We have been working over the past year with our minister's office to discuss and identify how we proceed with that—

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

So Minister Lightbound has been red-flagged.

[Rindala El-Hage]

They're very well aware of the situation, and we are in contact with them to decide how we're going to approach it.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Did the minister ever direct Canada Post to delay, scale back or reconsider the transition because of your financial situation?

[Rindala El-Hage]

At this point in time, there has been no specific directive, but due to the market availability of EVs and how ready it is, we've paused it.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Did anyone in the government question whether a $1-billion climate transition should proceed while Canada Post was posting hundreds of millions of dollars in annual losses?

[Rindala El-Hage]

We are in active discussion with the government to show them what those investments are and what the GHG savings and emissions reduction will be. They're very well aware of that. As we focus on building our future corporate plans, those will be built in the required investment with the alignment of the government.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Before we go to Mr. Gasparro, I'll remind you that we passed a motion in this committee that, if any questions are put to you, we require an answer within 21 days.

Mr. Gasparro, go ahead, please, for five minutes.

[Vince Gasparro, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here, and thank you for your service.

According to the 2024 Canada Post annual report, in 2006 you were delivering five and a half billion letters annually, and that number has since dropped to two billion. That same report said, “A postal system built for 5.5 billion letters can't survive on two billion letters.”

You've talked a lot about your modernization plan and engagement with small businesses, which is great.

Can you drill down a little bit more on how you plan to reverse the losses from 2025? Drill down a little more for me. Talk about small businesses, parcel delivery, etc.

[Doug Ettinger]

I'll say a couple of things very quickly. I'll try to be as expedient as I can.

Now that we have the legacy restrictions removed, we're unfrozen from the 1990s. We have a lot more flexibility going forward. The first negotiated deal in decades was done with our major union, so weekend delivery and all these new programs that I talked about earlier will be unleashed.

Part of the problem in the last 20 years has been that a lot of our labour disputes went to arbitration. Arbitration is a very narrow approach, and you don't get the change you need. Between those changes from last September and the new, important five-year deal with CUPW, we now have the flexibility to bring change. That's a big part of the turnaround.

We've also made some strategic investments in capacity and in IT that will enable us to come out very strongly. We're in a hyper-competitive environment against some of the best companies in the world. We have IT analytics and pricing analytics now that we can use so that we're very strategic on that. We're getting some of the best results for delivery on time in our history with a relatively new facility in Scarborough. The transformation plan we have is very thorough around all of that. As I said earlier, CMBs alone will save us $400 million to $500 million a year.

The main thing is to make sure, with customers, consumers and small businesses, that we are doing a better job with them on a customer service basis so they want to use us going forward. That's why a lot of these new programs have been developed. They're in the pipeline, and we're going to launch them over the next several months. The all-Canadian retail platform online will be a friendly platform for business and so on. There's a lot of it that we can now move forward on that the team is extremely excited about. We're ready for it. I think this is our moment to seize the opportunity, do it thoughtfully, do it respectfully, but move forward with with all these changes that we've been waiting for for a long time.

[Vince Gasparro, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

I'd like to focus a little more on parcels versus mail. Have you looked at international best practices in other jurisdictions? I'm thinking of Australia, the U.K. and parts of Europe. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes, thank you.

I'm on a global committee called KPG, representing 11 countries around the world. We meet constantly, virtually, and we exchange best practices. I'm very close to the CEO of Australia Post, La Poste in France, and so on. We compare notes.

On a global basis, we're all facing the same challenges. It's just that there are some differences in terms of timing and emphasis. We joke with Australia that we have snow and they have sand but that otherwise we're pretty similar. They also have a really low population density, actually lower than ours. They're the only country in the world with a population density lower than ours. They're at three people per kilometre, and we're at four per kilometre.

Our emphasis is certainly on parcels. All of our programs around small business are on parcels. The pricing programs that we're looking at are about making parcels affordable for small business. The retail marketplace that I talked about is about parcels, with Canadian retail companies supplying Canadian consumers who are looking for their goods, and on and on. Pickup at home is about parcel pickup.

I know that some people don't like the CMBs, but they're very secure. They're dry. They're locked up. They reduce injuries. They're good for the environment at the same time. Most importantly, they're a parcel locker now. They're not just for letters. They were originally built 40 years ago for letters. A lot of our programs were built in the 1980s and 1990s around letter mail, but they fit 80% of the parcels that go through our system.

Now we have MyMail. If you get the Canada Post app—I'd expect all of you to be on the Canada Post app, by the way, as a little plug for the team—it will give you a notification when you have a parcel and who it's from. All of these are things we want to move forward on, and we haven't been able to do so for quite some time.

[Vince Gasparro, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

Mr. Lawton, welcome to OGGO.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's good to be here on this committee for the first time.

Also, thank you, Mr. Ettinger and team, for being here.

Just to confirm that we're operating from the same baseline here, Canada Post lost $1.57 billion last year and $205 million in the first quarter of this year. Are those numbers correct?

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes, they are.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

You've spoken a little bit about how you believe you can reduce some of your costs. We haven't focused as much on how you think increasing revenue could factor into your operations. Where do you see the path to balance coming from predominantly? Is it going to be by increasing revenue or reducing costs? Which is going to occupy the lion's share of the deficit?

[Doug Ettinger]

Thank you. That's a good question, by the way,

There are a couple things, and it has to be a balance of both. As I said, you can't cut your way to success, and we have no intention of doing that. We have the best employees in the world, and they are great ambassadors out there, so that's one thing.

We lost $1.57 billion last year, which is a difficult number to even say. However, I would say it was a worst-case scenario. We were in labour disruption for 220 days, or something like that. Our customers were scared off. They have lots of options now in the Canadian marketplace.

There was a day many years ago when we were exclusive with a lot of retailers, and that was it. That doesn't exist now. There are online platforms, and even a small business can go online and get multiple options.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Yes, I don't want to get—

[Doug Ettinger]

I just wanted to mention that I think the deficit, the real deficit, is closer to $1 billion, but that was an unusually bad year because of all the activity.

We've cut a lot of costs on the management side. We've taken more than 10% out of our management and executive. We got out of the guaranteed pension many years ago. I'm on a DC pension. Most of our employees now are on a DC pension, so we've taken that cost out. We're looking for other ways. We took $200 million over the last two years out of our discretionary spending, travel, those kinds of things.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Thank you—

[Doug Ettinger]

I was going to move to revenue, sorry.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

We'll get back to that later on.

Of the costs that you believe you've cut adequately, are you still paying executive bonuses?

[Doug Ettinger]

Look, we have a bonus program, and as you—

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

You have two bonus programs, don't you?

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes, and I'll describe those to you.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

I don't need the descriptions, just the numbers that you expect for each of them this year, please.

[Doug Ettinger]

I understand the question, and I understand the sensitivities of it.

We have a corporate team incentive. That's the bonus program. It's called CTI. It hasn't paid a dime since 2011, so 15 years ago.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

What about the at-risk program?

[Doug Ettinger]

Regarding the at-risk program, in the broader context, we have a major transformation under way right now. After years of no change, we're moving forward. We are now in the biggest transformation probably in our history. We've really only had a couple of years in the last 20 years to get to root causes, so we want to do that.

One of the things I lose sleep over is keeping the good people who are with us.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

How much did you pay to keep those good people last year?

[Doug Ettinger]

In the broader compensation program, to keep that talent, we paid a bonus last year—sorry, an at-risk pay. It was part of their compensation. But at the same time—

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

How much was it? I'm trying to get to the number here, sir.

[Doug Ettinger]

I don't have the number at hand, but—

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Will you provide it to the committee?

[Doug Ettinger]

—but I want to emphasize, and I have to say this—

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Will you provide it to the committee?

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes, we'll provide that information to the committee.

That at-risk program has 7,000 people in it. That's the only program. Management is in it, and frontline supervisors are in it. Two unions are in it, and they have it in their collective agreements. Almost two-thirds of the 7,000 people in it are union members, and it's in their contracts. This is something that we've had in there.

Again, my biggest problem is that people who are great people are being stolen away from us to go to government or other Crown corporations.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

I think that speaks volumes about the way the government views things. This is a very important question because, of those 7,000, not all of them are executives. You would have people in there who are getting bonuses of a couple of thousand dollars.

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

When you provide these numbers, will you provide the amount going to executives so you're not effectively deflating your average?

What we're really after here is whether executives at Canada Post are making out like executives at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which paid out $30.6 million in bonuses in 2024, or Via Rail, which paid out $11 million in bonuses. We're not after what you're doing for unionized workers. We want to know how much you and your colleagues are getting while posting a $1-billion deficit.

[Doug Ettinger]

I hear you, and we'll provide you with the total numbers.

What I'm saying here is that these are important people who are working on the accommodation program for CMBs. These are valuable people who are working throughout the organization, right from the front lines on through.

That's the only program we have, so it's not an executive program per se. It is a program that runs through the organization. Administrators and assistants are part of it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Martin, go ahead, please.

[Danielle Martin, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Thank you.

I want to pick up on the question of the union and your workers because my understanding is that Canada Post is looking at some pretty high employee turnover in the not-too-distant future, with a very large proportion, almost half, of your workforce being within 10 years of retirement.

These are good jobs. They're good jobs for Canadians. I have certainly seen, in my riding and in my former practice as a family physician, that to have a job with Canada Post was to have some security, a decent wage and some protections. The same can't always be said of some of the competitor organizations. In urban environments, there are lots of folks for whom these jobs are really important.

How does this new negotiated settlement with CUPW put Canada Post in a position to attract and retain workers compared with the competition in this environment?

[Doug Ettinger]

That's a great question.

I'll say that it's been a challenge. We've been in the media; we've been out there, and we've been very transparent over the last couple of years about our challenges. For some people, that's hard to take, so we've had a higher than normal turnover. A lot of the people who are leaving are saying that it's because the compensation and the benefits aren't at the level of other Crown corporations and government departments.

As I mentioned earlier, we have a defined contribution pension that we take the risk on, and that's what I'm on. We don't have any guaranteed pensions here. We've taken those costs out. We've taken 10% of the management, and we've committed to the minister that we're going to continue to look at all layers.

One thing with CUPW is that those members still have job security in that agreement, so we're not.... A number that was presented in the media was 30,000. What we meant to say, and what we said, I think, was that up to 30,000 people will be eligible for retirement over the next 10 years. We're going to use attrition and leverage attrition so that people will leave with their retirement benefits and so on, but we might not replace them all. That's really what we're doing here.

[Danielle Martin, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

Right, but I think from our perspective, on all sides of the House, we're concerned about affordability and about ensuring that Canadians can make ends meet. One of the most important ways we can do that is to ensure that people are employed in good work with decent compensation and good benefits so that they can make ends meet. I salute you for reaching that negotiated settlement. I think it's really important for Canadians.

I represent the urban riding of University—Rosedale. It's in the heart of downtown Toronto. We've had a lot of focus, and understandably so, on rural communities this morning, but what people in urban communities are hearing you say is you will be doing your best to boost services in rural communities at the expense of the urban environment. Particularly in multicultural communities like mine, where people often are newcomers speaking different languages, trying to navigate government forms, etc., the post office has been a safe place to go to ask the kinds of questions that people may need to ask.

Can you talk a little bit about your perspective on maintaining market share in the urban environment and on providing good, solid and culturally appropriate services in urban communities like my own?

[Doug Ettinger]

Thank you for that question. I'm very sensitive to that. When I say “urban”, I say that because we have dealer post offices that are very prolific in primarily urban areas. In some cases, we'll have a corporate store that we run, which would be unionized, and we'll have a Shoppers Drug Mart right next door to it. You can literally throw a baseball from one to the other. We have quite a bit of that in some of the urban areas. Some of these urban areas used to be rural. We have some that used to be designated as rural, but now they're very much suburban and urban.

It's not that we want to rip it apart, because we don't, but we want to get some rebalancing in the system. Our goal, which we will commit to, is to maintain the service and maintain the community flavour that's out there in different ethnic communities, where they really rely on the post. A lot of those smaller communities use some of our money transfer services to send money outside of Canada. We do $2 billion a year in transactions on that level. We very much want to continue that.

[Danielle Martin, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

That's great. I'd encourage you, if your survey doesn't already do so, to think about how you might reach out to those communities where scanning a bar code or answering a survey in French or English might not be easy for people. In fact, the ways that people use the post office in urban environments are different and need to be included in the broader transformation plan.

I would suggest that you take this into consideration, as I'm sure you are, in the accommodation program as well. We often think about accommodation in terms of folks who live in an environment where they can't travel a long distance to get to a post office or whatever, but we have lots of older people in my community who are living in vertical towers in naturally occurring retirement communities where getting out of the house is an infrequent thing. Certainly, during the pandemic and our vaccine response, we had to think a lot about how to reach those folks.

Really, taking into account the urban underserved population is important. If you have anything to add with regard to how you're thinking about that, I'd be delighted to hear it.

[Doug Ettinger]

No, but it's a—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I have to interrupt. You've gone about two minutes past.

[Doug Ettinger]

I'm sorry.

[Danielle Martin, Liberal, University—Rosedale, ON]

I'm sorry. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for your accommodation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Perhaps you can provide the answer in writing.

We'll go to Madam Gaudreau, please.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

From what I understand, the partners and communities were not consulted directly, apart from the survey and other things.

Is there a plan on the minister's desk?

Where is it headed?

Are the outlines of the plan on the minister's desk?

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes. We submitted our plan to the minister last November. They have the whole plan, but they've been asking lots of questions since then. We've been clarifying things. They have the full plan. They've had the full plan since last November.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

We've talked a lot today about community mailboxes. People are watching to see what will happen, as we all are. However, there are also post offices.

Let me give you an example. In the municipality where I live, Lac-des-Écorces, there are two post offices a few kilometres apart. You mentioned that.

Are you going to consult people? Everyone is aware of the issue related to Canada Post.

What is the plan for the offices that will eventually be vacant?

People expect to be consulted. They want to be. We obviously want to make sure there will be no service disruption. People don't like to be left in the dark. They say that they've paid their taxes and have the right to know what's going on.

What do you say to those people?

[Doug Ettinger]

I answer saying that rightfully so, they should be asking these questions, so I have no issue with that whatsoever.

As I said before, as soon as we get approval to move forward, we'll make that public immediately. We will move to consult with the mayors of the small towns and the larger towns. We'll make sure that they have a binder that shows them the process, the next steps, the feedback we're looking for and what gaps there are.

We're fully committed to that. I know I've said it several times, but we are. We want to do this right for Canadians. We can't afford to get this wrong. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do it right, and we don't want to leave communities behind that can't afford to be left behind.

On the CMB side, Alex may have an example—it's more on community mailboxes, but it's a good example—about Sept-Îles and other areas around there, if we have the time. We may not, but Alex can add to that.

[Alexandre Brisson, Chief Operating Officer, Canada Post Corporation]

Thank you for the opportunity.

In part, let me give you an example of why we're excited about the transformation. When we say it's not cutting back service, but actually supporting our service, I think we have a prime example.

I'll use Sept-Îles and Côte-Nord in Quebec. Service has been a challenge in Sept-Îles for quite some time, and I'm sure you can relate to that. In part, labour shortage is a big challenge in Sept-Îles, Côte-Nord and the rural places. It's also a tough job. We're asking our letter carriers to do foot routes. They walk day after day. Winter is quite long in Sept-Îles, and they're always on foot, so that's 20, 25 or 30 kilometres of walking every day.

As we're transforming, we're looking at our activities and streamlining the way we work, which allows us to release some of our assets. Releasing assets means I'm now able to deploy assets to go and support Sept-Îles, for example, where we can motorize the routes. The combination of motorization and the implementation of CMBs means we're more productive in Sept-Îles. We're going to have fewer routes and we can better utilize the people who are there. The net impact of redeploying our resources is going to be better service in Sept-Îles. That matters a lot, and that's what we're about. That's a big part of our mandate.

All of these ways we're finding now through transformation to go and support a rural service is very powerful to me. I can talk about Sept-Îles. I can talk about Port-Cartier. I can talk about Amos—

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

In the Îles de la Madeleine, people receive their winter boots via Canada Post. So they are very concerned.

[Alexandre Brisson]

Right. I think there's something very positive for us there. The more we look at the way we work, the more we're able to rebalance our assets, and you're going to see a better service in the rural world.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

From what I understand, there are some trust issues. I hope that today's meeting will help our constituents and municipalities regain confidence in the Crown corporation. We're talking about binders and consultations. Using QR codes and conducting a survey is not enough.

It's not that we don't want to hear from you, but it's not normal to have to invite you here to get the straight goods, knowing that there's already a lot of information on the minister's desk and that the information we have is insufficient.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

We'll go to Mr. Gill, and then we'll go to Mr. Danko, and we'll finish up with Madam Gaudreau.

Mr. Gill, go ahead, please.

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Ettinger, the last time you were here, we talked a bit about organized crime and how it's impacting the mail system.

Can you provide to us in writing how many investigators are working to secure the system, the number of parcels that were intercepted for criminal activity in the past five years and the types of offences? Do you have the necessary legislative tools and the wherewithal to combat organized crime using our mail system?

[Doug Ettinger]

Those are great questions. I'll try to answer all of them in a row.

First of all, we have 80 postal inspectors across Canada. They're highly trained, but most importantly, they work closely with the RCMP, all of the provincial police forces, CSIS, etc. They have the ability, if they see a parcel that looks suspicious, to remove it and inspect it, and then if it contains an illegal substance or non-mailable matter, as we call it, they turn it over to the police right away. Last year, they intercepted, I think, around 10,000 of them, for a rough total street value of $10 million.

It's a very complex area. We're very sensitive to organized crime, and it gets better all the time, unfortunately. It's putting pressure on us—there's no question about it—but we do a lot of stuff in concert with the RCMP, like I said, and other police forces, so we're not doing it on our own. It's something that we're committed to.

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

Is the CBSA involved with you as well?

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes, 100%. I should have mentioned them. We have regular meetings in person with CBSA. We work very closely with them, particularly at border locations, obviously, where they're right in our facilities, in fact.

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

I'm going to suggest, Mr. Ettinger, that 80 people are not enough for a country this size. They have an entire police service devoted to this in the U.S.

I'm going to leave the rest of my time to my colleague, Mr. Lawton. I look forward to the written answers from you, sir.

Thank you.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gill.

I have a couple of quick questions on a topic I know you've addressed in the past.

The federal government at one point thought that Canada Post would be a logical conscript for its ill-fated firearms confiscation scheme. In the past, you and Canada Post have indicated, and your union has also indicated, that there is no interest in participating in this.

I just want to confirm with you if this is still your position.

[Doug Ettinger]

Yes, it's 100% still our position. Safety is our number one priority. We're not part of that program.

I, personally, was very uncomfortable with it at the time, in terms of their wanting folks to return their guns to post offices. I saw so many safety issues with that. We were not comfortable.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Further to that point, you're identifying areas where you hope to make up a deficit. The government hasn't been able to actually get any other mechanism that is viable for this through law enforcement or other groups. They could come to you and say, “Hey, we'll give you this much money conditionally to participate.”

Is that not at all something within the scope of what you're willing to do?

[Doug Ettinger]

Look, it's just me saying this openly, but one person's life is not something I want to live with. I think there just weren't enough safety guardrails around that particular proposal to make it viable.

We do ship on the ground from commercial manufacturers, but that's a very focused and very safe process where it's packaged in the right container and so on.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

I've used it myself.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

I'm familiar with that service as a customer. Thank you for that.

In the minute I have left, you indicated earlier that you wanted to speak to ways that you are looking at increasing the revenue stream. You have about 55 seconds if you'd like to share that now.

[Doug Ettinger]

There you go.

[Doug Ettinger]

Thank you.

As I said, the stability we have and the shackles coming off.... Our north star is to get to break-even in five years, so that's roughly 2030. What's good about our transformation with 10 work streams is that the team is extremely focused on this. We know what we have to do. We're ready. We have the teams in place.

By the way, we're not using consultants on this; we're doing it ourselves. It's on everyone's agenda. It's on my agenda every day. Every meeting we have is about transformation and how we are doing on the 10. We have a whole process to make sure they're integrated and not overlapping one another. That's been up and running for quite some time.

As we go forward, as I mentioned, there's a new retail platform for Canadian retailers. We want to grow the parcel business with all of this. For pricing—strategic pricing—it's not that we're going to discount like crazy, but we're going to go out there and try to retain customers, and for customers who left us during the labour disruption period, get them back with better service. Our service has never been better. Coming out of the last couple of years, it's 96% plus, coast to coast on a national basis.

There's pick up at home for returns. We have the most accessible return system in Canada. A lot of people are wanting to buy online and send things back. We have 25,000 locations where people can return things. You can go online, print a label with your retailer, slap the label on the package and bring it to Canada Post.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Mr. Ettinger.

[Doug Ettinger]

I'm getting into my marketing routine here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We're going to charge you for your advertising to offset some of our bills.

Mr. Danko, go ahead, please.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I think my big take-away from this discussion today and from previous discussions we've had about Canada Post is that all parties agree on the importance of Canada Post to Canadians. I'm thinking about that in the current context of getting information to everyone in the country in a way that is trusted and that you know it is going to be delivered. If you think about it, with the challenges of local media advertising, advertising on social media or whatever platform it is, Canada Post is the only way. If there's something critical that you need to get out to every single Canadian and know it's going to get there by a trusted source, Canada Post is really the only option.

Thank you for sharing the transition plan and the importance of the service.

I want to use the time I have left to talk about the collective agreement with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. You touched on it a few times, but I want to give you the opportunity to talk about the importance of that to certainty and your plans moving forward.

[Doug Ettinger]

That's a great question.

If you noticed, I'm a little more positive today, and that's one of the main reasons. It's been tough on Canadians, tough on small business, tough on our employees and tough on everyone in this room. It was a long grind, and we're so very pleased that the members ratified the agreement. As I said earlier, it's not a perfect deal. No one gets a perfect deal. There's give and take. You make concessions. They make concessions. This is one of the first negotiated deals at the table in decades for us.

As I said before, most of our previous labour interactions went into arbitration where a judge decides, and they're great people but in a very narrow way. You don't get any change coming out of that, good or bad, for employees or for the company. This one will bring change.

An example is weekend delivery. We've been without that while the competition has been doing it. We think that weekend delivery will be as much as 25% of total volume over the next five to seven years. It's like 7%, 8% or 10% right now, but you have to have it. You have to have it in your portfolio. This is a five-year deal. Typically we had four-year deals, and this is five. It gives us more stability out to 2029.

This is what allows, at least potentially, customers to come back to us. It's not going to be easy. We're going to have to work hard to get their trust, and I can assure you that our sales team is out there working hard on that with all these new programs and all the things. It gives customers some confidence, especially small businesses. They were hurt more than anybody. We really want to partner with them, help them with pricing, help them with programs and how to set up their websites. There might be some advertising in our network. We're looking at a whole revenue stream around media. Think of post offices with an electronic screen advertising small businesses all across Canada, such as from Îles-de-la-Madeleine. You might have somebody doing some great things there, and they'll get exposure across Canada. We do a lot of that with small business.

We are unshackled and refreshed now. I can't say that enough. It's good for our employees, too. They have job security, but they know that transformation is coming. They understand what it's going to be, and we're going to work with them very carefully. These are good-paying jobs and, to the earlier point, they get great benefits, as they should, and great pensions. We need to maintain as many as we can. We'll do it, and we'll give them.... As I said earlier, as people retire and move on in their retirement with their pension and so on, we may not replace every position. That's where we're going to use attrition to get our numbers down. We're going to be very careful.

The team is so excited, I can't put it in words. The mountains that have been moved were felt to be immovable, to be honest with you, for years and decades really. We're ready to go. This is our moment.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

That's great. I think that's a great place to leave this discussion.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Madam Gaudreau will finish up, please.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I have one last question.

As I understand it, Mr. Ettinger, not only will workers be informed in advance of the changes affecting community mailboxes, among other things, but as of today, June 18, you have also promised to keep all Canadians and Quebeckers informed. You promised to set the record straight to reassure them and restore some lost trust in Canada Post.

Is that correct?

[Doug Ettinger]

One hundred per cent, I'm concerned that we've lost trust. We certainly lost trust through the last two years with our labour disruption, which was so difficult, but there's also this. We need to do right by Canadians. We need to give you that information.

By the way, our employees will be the first to know of any changes and, in fact, it's in the collective agreements. It's not only just something we would do, but they require a certain advance notice. We're not out there to purge everybody. It's going to be done thoughtfully. There will be some change that will have to happen for us to get this organization back to sustainability, but I promise you, the minute these additional programs are approved, we'll be out in the public talking about them and doing them properly.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We could make a list of all the questions asked.

We'll expect the answers in three weeks to make sure we don't forget any because there have been a lot of promises.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you for reminding our panel.

Thank you very much for being with us today.

I appreciate your optimism. If you watch me in committee, you know I'm not exactly the “glass is half full” guy. I'm the “glass is less than empty” person. However, I appreciate your optimism. If you're able to, I look forward to your providing some more information about some of the timing. We don't have an approved transformation plan, it seems. I don't want to say it's too optimistic to be optimistic when we don't have a plan yet, but I would appreciate it if, over the coming weeks and months, you could send us any information you can on some of a timeline. When we're burning through $1 billion in cash per year, I see a lot of urgency.

[Doug Ettinger]

There is urgency.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you for being with us.

Colleagues, before we break, I want to say thanks to our wonderful clerk, Marc-Olivier, the mighty MOG. Thank you also to Ryan and Olivier, as well as our translators, our support team and, of course, our IT team.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I will remind you that August 30 is the date we have set for witnesses for the motion 16 study. If you could have those in by then, I would appreciate it.

Mr. Ettinger, before you go, as I've stated before, I want to give a personal thank you to Donald Cooper. He is our Canada Post rep based in, unfortunately, Calgary, not Edmonton. He's always an incredible help. Recently, we ran into an issue where, unbeknownst to constituents, Canada Post or anyone else, the city decided to dig up several streets' worth of laneways, blocking their access. He was able to help get an emergency CMB put in so that we could get mail to our constituents right away. I want to pass that on to him and to you.

Thank you, again, for being with us.

[Doug Ettinger]

Thank you very much. I appreciate it very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Have a wonderful summer.

We are adjourned.