Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would first like to thank the members of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology for inviting us to be part of your work on the green economic recovery following COVID-19.
My name is Jean-Philippe Grenier and I am the 3rd National Vice-President of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. I am accompanied by my colleague Hugo Charette, who is the Campaign Coordinator, Metropolitan Montreal Region.
We are here today to talk to you about our campaign called Delivering Community Power, which the union has been conducting since 2016. This is the postal workers' plan both to fight climate change and to provide new services at post offices. Using recovery principles, we have blended the environmental concerns with the new services that we could provide at post offices all over the country.
For your work, we want to talk to you about two aspects of the project of which we are particularly fond: the electrification of Canada Post's fleet of vehicles and the establishment of a network of public charging stations at Canada Post facilities. I want to focus on these two aspects. I also invite you to seek information on our overall campaign, because it contains a multitude of other components.
Like many others in the transportation and logistics industry, Canada Post is a major emitter of greenhouse gases. Canada Post makes deliveries to many diverse locations, but even more significant is the fact that it has the largest fleet of vehicles in Canada. We have 20,000 vehicles in total, about 13,000 of which belong directly to the Crown corporation. The remaining 7,000 are used by Canada Post employees in rural areas. The latter are, in effect, using their own vehicles to deliver parcels and mail.
For years, we have been urging the employer to electrify its transportation. Its response is that it is currently transforming the fleet of vehicles by replacing, with hybrid and electric models, the traditional delivery vehicles that are at the end of their useful life. The costs of doing so are not really any higher.
That is the employer's position, but, actually, despite the current consensus on electrifying transportation, Canada Post is still opting for hybrid technology. I often entertain myself by saying that, as a Crown corporation, we prefer to stick with an old technology, hybrid technology, while the need is to start adopting new ones. Some hybrid vehicles we have on the roads are not rechargeable. So no energy is recovered. Other hybrid vehicles are rechargeable, but there are no electric vehicle charging stations at Canada Post facilities.
Our plan is to install electric vehicle charging stations across the entire country. Canada has about 6,100 post offices. The recharging stations could be a win-win situation, both for Canada Post customers who could use them when they go to the post office, and for corporation employees, given that the fleet of electric vehicles could be recharged at night.
Quite recently—in 2018, if I am not mistaken—we asked Queen's University to conduct a study in the Maritime provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The study was about implementing a secondary network using existing infrastructures. I invite you to take a look at it. My colleague Mr. Charette will distribute it to the committee members. The study established that electric vehicle charging stations are generally deployed in a primary network that follows major arteries. But in rural areas, gaps exist. Post offices could play a very important role.
Currently, Canada Post has a plan to install nine electric vehicle charging stations in the whole country, whereas 6,100 locations are possible. We regret the fact that Canada Post went to an American company for the charging stations, when we have companies such as AddÉnerie.
I will now give the floor to my colleague, Mr. Charette.