Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to speak to your committee.
I'll use this platform to address four topics, if I have enough time, of course. Five minutes is quite short.
The first topic is postage rates, which adversely affect the first nations of Quebec and Canada.
The first nations businesses and members in some communities pay much higher rates to ship packages than residents of neighbouring cities and towns. The situation is partly the result of how the major shipping companies determine their pricing policies. This creates an additional barrier to economic development in first nations communities, particularly given the rise in popularity of online commerce.
The postal code system established by Canada Post is composed of two sequences of letters and numbers. The first sequence, called the prefix, corresponds to the forward sortation area. The second sequence, called the suffix, refers to a specific geographic location. In Quebec, postal codes all begin with the letters G, H or J and are followed by a number between 0 and 9. Rural and remote areas are automatically assigned a 0 in the second position of their prefix. As we know, indigenous communities were voluntarily established by the Government of Canada in rural and remote areas. As a result, they have postal codes with a 0 in the second position of their prefix.
However, with population growth, communities once categorized as rural have become urban. These include Wendake and Kahnawake, two Quebec communities with many businesses. Nevertheless, the postal codes of the communities have never changed.
In Canada, major shipping companies such as Purolator, UPS and Fedex determine their pricing policies based on six criteria. Three of these criteria take into account only the shipper's postal code prefix. These criteria are distance from the place of origin to the destination, distance from a sorting facility and population density. The criteria don't take into account the entire postal code. For a postal code that includes a 0 in its prefix, the delivery and shipping costs are automatically higher, even if the community is actually located in an urban area.
For example, it costs $14.77 to ship a package from Wendake to Sherbrooke. If you want to send a package from Quebec City—a city that surrounds the Huron‑Wendat community— to Sherbrooke, you must pay $12.02. This constitutes a price difference of 23%. I'll give another example. To ship a package from Wendake to Wendake, within the community's own territory, it costs $14.06. It costs $9.41 to ship a package from Quebec City to Quebec City. This amounts to a fairly substantial difference of 49%.
A package sent from Wendake to Wendake costs more than a package sent from Quebec City to Baie‑Comeau, which must travel 400 kilometres and take a ferry to reach its destination. This comparison is quite significant.
For a business that runs primarily online and that must ship several packages a day, this extra charge can add up to several thousand dollars a year. This situation also affects individuals who pay higher delivery rates for their everyday purchases. The financial losses associated with this inherent racism in shipping company pricing policies can amount to millions of dollars for first nations businesses and members.
To ensure that indigenous businesses are on a level playing field with businesses located outside the communities, this situation must be addressed. In our opinion, there are two possible solutions. The first solution is to change the postal codes of indigenous communities identified as rural when, in reality, these communities are urban. At first glance, this solution is quite complicated to implement, since it requires different levels of government to work together with band councils, businesses and individuals. This process would be time consuming and complicated. However, in the end, it would solve the problem once and for all.
The other solution is somewhat simpler. It could be implemented alongside the first. The government could require shipping companies to take into account the full postal code, meaning the prefix and suffix, when establishing pricing policies.
As I said earlier, given the increasing popularity of online commerce at this time, this situation must be addressed. It's important to ensure that indigenous businesses can be as competitive as non‑indigenous businesses, and that a dollar earned in one community can be worth as much as a dollar earned one town over.
If I have time, I'll speak about my second topic—